Well, after all was said and done, I pilfered (with permission) the John McCain campaign sign that a well-meaning neighbor had placed in M’s parents’ yard. They’d immediately brought it into their garage, where it stayed put until I spoke up for it.
“I’ll put it in my parents’ yard when they’re not looking,” I said.
During our next visit to my parents, I excused myself from the late-night Scrabble game. “I should bring in N’s backpack,” I said, “so it’ll be ready for our hike tomorrow.”
In the pitch black dark of the cloudy country night, I stole down the driveway, groped for the roadside, and shoved the sign’s wire legs into some soft ground. The next morning, Dad claimed that a student had played the prank on them.
I hid my face behind the newspaper he’d just brought in and gave myself away with, “Really? It wasn’t there when I went out for the backpack last night.”
Of course, they didn’t want the sign, even if the polls had been closed for nearly two months, so I stowed it in our trunk once again, plotting a future placement at my sister‘s house.
The opportunity bared itself this past weekend, when she invited us over for a sampling of her latest food tremendosities. I made sure to park the car near the road, and before we left, I again stumbled to the roadside and planted the sign.
The next morning, M emailed me the details:
“She just called–she found the sign and thought it was pretty funny.”
“She knew it was us?” I wrote back.
“She asked if I did it–‘No.’–Then if you did it, and I confessed. We must’ve been primary suspects.”
Us? Suspects? Well, okay.
One Comment
dragonfly
i get almost as much glee out of hearing about other peoples’ pranks as I do out of my own. this was a good one! nice work, C.