This morning I pranked my roommate while he was in the shower. Now, you have to understand, I have never been one to prank. In fact, this morning was the first time I ever did, that I can remember. I have, over the years, been the recipient of some pranks (for example, in the MTC one night, I woke up in the hallway, still on my mattress). But I have never been the mastermind of one, especially ones involving showers.
Until now.
The idea came to me a few days ago, and the brilliance fell upon me so fast that I just needed to tell my good friend and roommate, Cary, all about it. However, something stopped me.
This prank, I realized,
I can only pull on him. If I tell him about it now, I will never be able to experience it, on anybody, ever. It was like swallowing an entire banana not to tell him right then, but for the sake of the prank, I choked it down.
First let me just say, I love Cary. He is like my brother. Just the other day, he and I went to
International Cinema to see Psycho. It was my first time seeing it, and it is Cary's favorite movie. He has it memorized. Now that I think about it, that is kind of creepy, considering he is my roommate. Anyway, I loved it, and I especially loved the musical score. I went home and downloaded the soundtrack--which leads us to this morning's prank.
I woke up several times, giddy, like it was Christmas, only to discover that it was still a few hours before the time to get up. I tried several times to go back to sleep, and when it finally got to about 15 minutes before the time he would likely wake up, I crept into the bathroom and placed my fully charged laptop on the rack of magazines and toiletries, power on but with a closed lid, the volume fully up. I snuck back in bed and pretended to be asleep for a little while longer. My heart was pounding.
Before long, he woke up and went into the bathroom. I heard him rustle around in there four a couple minutes until finally--squeak--the shower curtain was audibly moving back and forth, and the sound of steaming hot water muffled all other sounds. I jumped out of bed--it was actually happening--and I excitedly turned on my iPod to the Remote app. (For those unfamiliar with this app, Remote allows the user to control, wirelessly, the iTunes on the laptop that it is paired with.)
I waited until he had had enough time to be fully invested in the comfort of his shower, at which point I scrolled, from the comfort of my bedroom, through the songs remotely on my iPod. I opened up track 17 of the Psycho soundtrack, "The Murder," and listened outside the door.
SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH SCREECH went the violins of the music from my laptop speakers, and I heard Cary yell. It was not at all a feminine scream, like I had been hoping, but a deep, aggressive "AH!" I started laughing hysterically and he yelled at me. He had made the mistake of not locking the bathroom door (though it was not at all in my plan to actually come in the bathroom), and he immediately reacted to the music by leaping out of the shower to hold the door shut, making the floor sopping wet. This, he explained, was to prevent me from charging in with a knife.
I could end this story here but I want to comment briefly about the intense psychological concern I had before it happened. I had never pranked anybody before, so I had all these questions about the morality of the subject. I didn't want to hurt Cary, and I feared that he would slip in the shower. But the thought that really bothered me was when I remembered that there was a razor in the shower. I wondered if he shaved in the shower. So before he went in, I asked him, "Cary, do you shave with an electric razor?" He answered yes, and that put me at ease.
Last night I really came close to blowing the whole thing. I was so excited that I just looked at him and said, "Cary, I am planning on pranking you." He looked at me, annoyed, planning retaliation already in his mind. I assured him that the prank I was planning would in no way hurt him or embarrass him; it would just be awesome. And awesome it was.
