Tag Archives: practical joke

Soda Prank

Nationality: U.S. American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Florida
Performance Date: 4/15/15
Primary Language: English

Context: A friend from high school and I were talking over Skype, and during that conversation she told me about some pranks she had pulled on her college friends during the school year.

Interview Transcript:

Informant: There’s one that I do on my friend, where I… he’s obsessed with Dr. Pepper, so I took Sprite, and I poured soy sauce in it, and I gave it to him, and he got very upset, and it was hilarious.

Me: That’s brilliant. Where did you get that idea?

Informant: I got it from like, a website.

Me: Which website?

Informant: I don’t know. You could find it. Then like, another time, we took worcestershire sauce and, um, we filled the bottle half way with Dr. Pepper, and put worcestershire sauce in it, and soy sauce, and some other sauce, and we tried to get him to drink it, but on accident, someone else drank it.

[Laughter]

Analysis:

This prank provides an example of a practical joke that students play on their friends. This informant performs the prank on people she is already close with rather than as a hazing ritual. The prank is also simple and does not cause harm to the target beyond annoyance. It gets its appeal from tricking the target into thinking they are accepting a gift when in reality they are receiving something disgusting.

No Soap, Radio (Joke)

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Finance
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: 3/14/12
Primary Language: English

Two elephants are in a bathtub. One elephant says to the other, “Please pass the soap.” The other elephant says, “No soap, radio!” 

My informant  first heard this joke from her father, who’d been telling it for as long as either she or he can remember. My informant told me that her father used to say this joke to her all the time, and it would always make her laugh. It wasn’t until she turned 12 or so that she realized she had absolutely no idea what the joke meant. She would ask her dad again and he’d just laugh and say the punchline again, “No soap, radio!” As if it were incredibly obvious. After bothering him about it for a long time, she finally told me her that he, in fact, had no idea what the joke meant either. It was just something someone had told him years ago and had stuck with him. The point of the “joke” is that there is no punchline, it’s just a practical joke, meant to provoke a reaction from the person who hears it. Either the person hearing the joke will assume a false understanding of the joke–“Oh, hahaha, I get it!”–and thus becomes the butt of the joke himself, or they will confess that they don’t get it, and therefore feel left out.

The joke is best when told with a wingman. Way when the joker says the punchline, the wingman laughs, which encourages others to laugh–even if they have no idea what they’re laughing about.

My informant tells me her entire immediate family knows this joke, and once in a while they’ll employ it on an unsuspecting stranger. “Everyone always falls for it and laughs the first time,” she said, “and so even after, when you’re on the ‘inside,’ it’s never mean-spirited…everyone is always embarrassed about the time they laughed!”

Loose Goose

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Loose Goose

 

Practical Joke/Senior Prank

 

When discussing pranks by high school Seniors, my informant shared one his friend conducted. The following is a transcript of our interview:

 

Informant: “ It was the closest thing to a decent Senior prank that came out of our school. One time my best friend’s older brother captures a goose when he was a Senior, and there was down by the river, I live close to the Willamette River, and there’s this beach park thing where these giant geese hang out, and they’re fucking mean. You try to feed them but they are really pushy so they’ll attack you unprovoked, I swear to god they want to kill you, so this guy goes down there and captures a goose, I think he lured it into the parking lot over like two hours with a bunch of bread, so in the parking lot they do kung fu stuff and put it in their care and I’m pretty sure it was dangerous and probably a little illegal, so they put it under a blanket and brought it into the school and released it into the cafeteria. No one to this day knows who was responsible for releasing the goose.  It was super angry and ran around and shit all over the place because it couldn’t get out. The custodian had to come out and capture it – it was pretty spectacular I hear. “

 

My informant said that, although he did not partake in conducting any practical jokes as a high school Senior, a large pastime for his group of friends was dreaming up pranks to pull on the school.

 

Capturing an animal to desecrating the school, this prank is an act of rebellion against the school. Empowering the student, this demonstrates the administrative body’s inability to control the student population, and serves as vengeance for the house of work demanded of students. Also, this makes a mockery of an otherwise serious space, defacing the school on a less physical level.

 

Crickets

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Crickets

Senior Prank/Practical Joke/Story

 

During a conversation about Senior pranks in high school, my informant recounted a Senior prank he heard happened at a neighboring school. The following is a transcript of our interview:

 

“Informant: There were two highschools, lakeridge was across the lake and we were rivals with them, but I had heard for Their Senior prank they got a thousand crickets and released them into the ventilation system and for the next month there were still cleaning up piles of crickets. Apparently it was horrible. Teachers were getting really pissed because they would chirp away in the back of the Class room, so during awkward lectures and speeches there would be crickets going in the back.”

 

My informant said that Senior pranks were often a topic of conversation in school.  Though he did not do any pranks, he said that he and his friends would often talk about them, trading stories they had heard from other schools.

 

This is an act of rebellion, using animals to desecrate the school.  This empowers the students, who are subjected to the authority of administrative bodies. Breaking down the seriousness of the school setting, the crickets chirp in the back of Classes. Often associated with awkward silence or the silence of an unentertained crowd, cricket chirping disrupts the Classroom and criticizes teachers by comparing them to boring things.  The act of a prank of a school illustrates the students’ empowerment through disobeying rules established by the administration and express students’ annoyance.

Senior Ditch Day

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, Illinois
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Reminiscing about high school, my informant told me of a tradition/practical joke that Seniors in his high school would orchestrate.

The following is an transcript from our interview:

 

“Informant: Every year, for as long as I’ve known, the Seniors would have a Senior Ditch Day. After the Prarie State Achievement Exam, which all students in Illinois had to take, the Senior Class would skip school for a day. They would all go out to party or just do whatever they wanted. Many would go out somewhere the night before, and celebrate by drinking or smoking, and would use the next day as a skip day to sleep away the hangover.

My year, I spent the day with a couple friends, celebrating like those before me, but we didn’t get together as a group like other grades. Usually they go out to a campsite or someone’s house that’s really far away so they can’t get in trouble, but we just went to my friends house and were sneaky.”

 

My informant said he looked forward to this day for many years, excited by the idea of breaking rules, feeling free, and skipping work for a day. He said that even though the whole grade wasn’t together, he had a great time hanging out with his friends anyway.

 

The first thing to note is when this tradition takes place: because the examination has passed and these are Seniors in high school, they likely will not be punished. Even if they are punished, they won’t have to deal with the consequences for too long since this happens towards the end of their career. Celebrating the end of work (the examination done) the students skip school.  This helps the Seniors through a liminal period, since the administrations rules don’t have as much of an effect on them any more. Almost at the end of their careers as students, the Seniors illustrate that they are no longer children by escaping the confines of school and breaking laws (doing activities reserved for adults).

Simultaneously, this is a practical joke and an act of rebellion. These students break laws and disregard school rules. A show of power, the students, skipping school, demonstrate they cannot be controlled by the school’s authority.