"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you." - Christion Morgenstern
"There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them." -J.K. Rowling

Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Great Prank War, Men's Turn (Round 1)

So... almost two months ago Ryan and I pulled our prank on the girls.  I know it's been a really long time since then, making this post well over-due, but it's finally here!  (But short....)

So, planning for this prank took a while.  Ryan and I have had our plans for a few months before we found the perfect time to execute our plan.  Our plan was to stuff Katie's and Paige's car with packing peanuts and newspaper.  This had to be done at night when the girls were both asleep.  It also had to be done when we wouldn't cause the girls to be late for anything the next morning.  What better time to do this than LDS General Conference weekend?

So, first thing's first, we needed a way to get into the girl's locked cars.  Ryan came up with the idea to make copies of their keys and use those.  So one day Ryan took Paige out shopping with him while I snuck into his house, stole Paige's keys from there, drove to Lowes, copied the key and drove back to Ryan's house before he and Paige got back.  It worked.  Then a few days later I snatched one of Katie's spare keys from her room.


Win.  After we had their keys in our possession, we just needed to buy the supplies next.  So Ryan and I went out on the Wednesday before we were going to prank the girls and bought one GIANT bag of packing peanuts, wax pineapples, ribbon, chocolate-scented candles, magnetic alarms, and some other supplies to randomly put in their cars.



Then we went to Ryan's house to store everything.  Then I brought in a big pile of newspapers to mix in with the packing peanuts, and we spent almost an hour crumpling up all of the newspaper.



 (Our hands were black afterwards)

So we had everything planned, bought, stored, and prepared for our visit to the girls' houses on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  When we finally got to stuffing the girls' cars, they ended up looking something like this:

















Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Great Prank War, Round Two (Girls): The Adventure of the Double Agent S's

So. . .sometime in the near future, the guys MIGHT finish their side of Round One, and post their story, but I'm impatient and can't wait for that, so they can suffer the consequences and you can enjoy the Adventures of the Double Agent S's.
It was a dark and stormy . . . well, morning, and Elmo's giggles didn't help with the picutre much, did they Ryan? I'd been sleeping withe the demonic doll in my closet for about a week, but Kaite and I were finally ready. For those of you that follow, and ever wish to replicate this prank/excelent dance asking idea, here is what you need:
Proper attire: This might just be a me and Katie thing, but it definitely makes it more fun. We wore all black, naturally. What kind of spies wouldn't?



  1. Red yarn: Effective, and not-deadly lasers. You don't want to lose any limbs.

  2. A shoe box: Case for the bomb

  3. Jack-in-the-Box: the bomb. It works best if you find one that's creepy, like a clown or an Elmo, for instance.

  4. Painter's tape: holds the yarn up pretty effectively actually.

  5. iPod and iHome: for the continuous loop of awesome spy music.


We planned to strike today, May 17th, because, miracle of miracles, Tanner was working and Ryan had school, neither Katie or I worked - which is more astounding for me, but hey. I set my alarm for ten thirty so that we could strike at eleven, but thankfully I slept through my alarm. You'll understand why it was a good thing in a minute.
After many apologies to Katie, our final preperations, and dressing like spies, we were off. I was literally about to turn the lights off in my room when Katie gasped.
"Ryan is calling me," she said.
"He's supposed to be in school!" I cried as she answered the phone.
I just heard random muttering on the other side.
"Oh, I'm just with Paige at her house," she said.
I guessed at what he'd said and started frantically shaking my head.
"Um. . . just a sec, Ry, let me call you back," Katie said and hung up the phone.
"WHY ISN'T HE AT SCHOOL?!" we screamed simultaneously.
"He wants to hang out," Katie said.
"Well we can't, we've got to be IN HIS ROOM," I reminded her.
"But we can't just let him go home, because we can't get into his rom if HE'S THERE," Katie said.
"Okay, call him back," I said. "But we've got to come up with a story to get us, and him, out of here, and HIM back to school."
"Don't worry," she said. "I've got to go dress shopping, remember?"
"You and your dresses," I said shaking my head as she redialed Ryan's number.
"Hey, you should just come to her house," she said once he answered the phone.
Ryan answered and Katie's eyes got wide, "Okay, we'll just be in her room, the front door is unlocked."
She snapped the phone shut and looked at me, "He'll be here in two minutes."
I looked myself up and down, taking in my tri-city spy outfit, and I suddenly understood why her eyes had gotten all wide. One look at each other, and we were BOOKING it down the stairs, stripping off our benighted clothing and throwing our 'normal people' clothes on, so that Ryan wouldn't suspect our plans. I opened up my new computer, Kiwi, and began working on a much more subtle part of the prank: the continuous loop of the Mission Impossible Theme. My only issue was that I could NOT get the file into my iTunes. So I was still working on it as Ryan walked in.
"Hey guys," he said. "I thought you'd be at Jimmy Johns, Paige."
"Nah, not today," I said, shooting a seriously annoyed glance at Katie.
She laughed.
"What're you doing?"
"Just trying to get this mp3 file on my iTunes," I said.
"Trying to decide which dress I want," Katie said.
"Oooh, which ones are you looking at?" Ryan asked, sitting on my bed next to her and adjusting her computer screen so that they could both look, while I sat on the other side of the bed trying to finish the preperation for our prank.
About half an hour passed and, after hearing multiple outbursts of frustration from me, Ryan looked up.
"What're you trying to do?" he asked.
"All I want is to get this file on my iTunes, that's IT," I said.
"Here, let me try," he said, pulling Kiwi towards him and beginning to fiddle with it.
After about five minutes of unsuccessful attempts from him, I grabbed Kiwi, deciding to download a completely different file. As I pulled Kiwi away, Ryan caught a glimpse of the file's title: Mission Impossible. An outraged cry tore through hi slips.
"AH! I JUST AIDED YOU!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT, I JUST AIDED YOU!!!"
I deleted the file, with the most innocent expression I could muster, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're so full of it," he said and went back to Katie's computer.
I got the song onto my iTunes and iPod, and Ryan decided that it would probably be a good idea for him to go back to school. I don't know if ya'll can tell, but I'm rolling my eyes REALLY, really high as I'm typing this. Katie and I played the part well:
"It's just lunch time, right?" we asked. "You should stay til that is over."
"No, no, I've got to go," he said, like the good little student our Ryan really is - seriously, people 4.0 throughout High School, no joke.
"Okay, we'll walk you out at least," I said making eye contact with Katie.
We all walked up the stairs and Ryan bent over to put his shoes back on.
"What are you guys doing after I'm out of school?" Ryan asked. "We should just get back together."
"I've got to get to Salt Lake, Paige is coming dress shopping with me," Kaite said, securing our plans.
"Dang, well, text me, because I've got a math text to take, and attendance school, so I might be able to do something in between that and the date I've got going tonight."
"How long will you be after school?" I asked casually.
"At least three o'clock," Ryan replied.
"Sweet, maybe we'll see you then," Kaite said, pulling him into a hug and giving me an excited expression over his shoulder.
I hugged him and he left. Katie and I lingered at the doorway until we were just out of his eye shot, and then literally blasted down the stairs, stripping our normal people clothes off, and forcing our spy uniforms over our heads. We flew back up the front stairs (because Katie and I are just cool like that), and right over to Death - Eater of Humans. We were just about to Ryan's house and I decided to jinx our day even further.
"I'm going to cry if we pull around the corner and his car is there," I said.
Katie pulled around the corner, and . . .
That's right.
Birdie - the Painted - was in his usual perch outside the Ditty household. Almost mocking us. Almost.
"WHY?!" we both cried as Katie sped past to pull around so we could stalk his house without creeping out the neighbors too much.
"What're we going to do?" Katie asked, frantic. "We're already THREE HOURS behind!!"
"I'll text Jill," I said as I pulled out my phone.
Jilly is Ryan's older sister, she was going to be home so we could break in and attack Ryan's room. Luckily, we all work together so it's not weird for me to have her number. I opened a new message to her and typed:
"So, you should get Ryan out asap."
She replied:
"He's home for lunch, I'll let you know as SOON as he leaves"
I sighed, and replied:
"Sweet, thanks JIll :D
"So, what do we do now?" I asked.
"We could go to Starbucks, my treat," Katie said.
I'm not really one to turn down free Starbucks, so I agreed and we drove to our favorite coffe shop. As we were walking in, I lost control -
"Who would have thought that turning your best friend's rooms into Secret Spy lairs would be so FREAKIN complicated?!" I asked as we walked past this group of girls. Every single one of thier eyes got wide and one followed us with her eyes as we walked over to the register.
"I know, right?" Katie replied. "The dinosaurs (see The Great Prank War, Round One (Girls): Pre-historic AIDS) were not this hard."
"The whole world, or rather, Ryan is just against us this time," I said. "It's never been this hard before."
"Yeah, our plans usually go off without a hitch!" I said, trying not to laugh as I realized that the first girl wasn't the only one watching us anymore.
Of course, though, Ryan chose that time to enter our story - yet again. I had to restart my phone because it has these random spazams where it decides that it doesn't want to get service at all. When it turned back on I got a text from Ryan from about ten minutes ago that said:
"Hey, I don't want to go back to school, we should hang out again."
It was a good thing that neither Katie or I had gotten our drinks yet because I'm pretty sure we would have thrown them.
"WHY DOESN'T HE JUST GO TO FREAKIN SCHOOL!?!?" I asked.
"Tell him we're already gone!" Katie said, so I replied:
"Dang it, we're already on the freeway to Salt Lake, if you'd texted me like five minutes ago you totally could have come with us. Kate really needs to get her dress. You should just go to school." "Dang it, okay. . ." was his reply.
We got our drinks and I got another text, this time from Jill:
"He's leaving."
"SWEET, thanks :D" was my reply.
We began to head back out to Death - Eater of Humans - when a rather agravating thought hit me.
"Kate, if he can't go to either of our houses, can't be at his own house, and doesn't want to go to school, where will he go?"
"Oh crud, he'll come here," she said, eyes widening. "We've got to book it."
We ran the rest of the way to Death - Eater of Humans - and sped out of the parking lot, bird watching the entire way back to his house. To Ryan's credit, he actually did go back to school, so the anxiety was all for nothing. We pulled back up to the Ditty household and dashed up to the front door, carting all our supplies.
"Hey, Jill," I said as we ran in. "We'll be up in his room."
"Okay," she said.
We ran up and threw his door open and got to work. I taped up our Top Secret file envelope to his door. It contained a note that said:
"Mr. Ditty:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the disarming of the bomb in the center of the room before you. Because of the delicacy of this mission, you may not use any tools but your own two hands and your own store of craft and cunning. We have no way of figuring when the bomb will detonate, so we advise that you disarm it as quickly as possible. As always, should you be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. You wish this message would self-destruct."
Katie positioned our creeper Elmo bomb in the center of the room with a second envelope labeled "Agent D" on top. Inside there was another note that read:
"Agent D:
Your instructions are:



  1. The bomb must not move. The enemies that planted it, docked it on a mine that will detonate if the box even shifts positions. Use extreme caution.

  2. Once you've broken through to the inner mechanism of the bomb, be sure the explosive device doesn't move. If it does, you may have to figure out the rest on your own.

  3. There should be an easier way into the inner mechanism. The plans we intercepted show that there should be nothing keeping you from easily accessing the inner mechanisms.


We regret that we had to waste your prestigious skills on a mission as simple as this, but our bomb squads are occupied deflecting a Pagan attack on the White House.
Best of luck to you,
The Double Agent S's
I pulled my iPod out of my back pocket and selected our Top Secret playlist which consisted of only one song that was on a continuous repeat - The Mission Impossible Theme. Once we were all set up we began setting up the laser security system. This was actually a lot easier than we thought it would be. It actually made the both of us feel super awesome. Especially since, being the nerds we are, we pretended that once the yarn was taped it actually was a high-intensity laser that could chop our limbs off. The awesome spy music in the background helped a lot too.
We got out of Ryan's room pretty quickly - thank heaven, because we had to make our appointment at Tanner's house. We were suprised that we actually got there early, because not only were we three hours behind (thank you, Ryan) but we'd also had to take a break and pick Zoey - Kate's little sister - up. We'd decided that we would send the tell-tale text of 'The deed is done' at three o'clock, because Ryan would get it before he got home from attendance school/math test, and Tanner wouldn't be able to do anything about it either way because he had to be at work until five. How well do ya'll think that went over though?
Katie got a call from Ryan as we were heading to Tanner's house. Apparently, he decided to screw with our plans YET AGAIN and come home before three. We were in trouble for not following the rules - we argued that he should be in trouble for not following his freakin schedule. In the end we decided that we would colaberate at Ryan's house after his date and figure out the kinks in our rules. (For the record - because I'm SURE we'll need it - the collaberation never happened, but we did agree that rule #9 means that there must be a documentation on THIS blog - as in Moments Like These - and that the text is to be sent after the prank has been completely pulled.)
We actually had to wait a few minutes at Tanner's house before his mom was home to let us in. We may have been the tri-city spies, but there was NO way we were breaking into his house. Tanner's room is much larger than Ryan's so it was much more time consuming. Luckily we had our system from doing Ryan's so it still went pretty quickly.
The Double Agent S's have made their mark.
Boys?
We HIGHLY doubt you'll be able to top that :D


Moments Like These