Pulling "Cranks"

I don't remember how it came up, but somehow while sitting at the dinner table as a family, Aaron and I got to reminiscing and telling stories of funny pranks that where played during our college days.  You should've seen Malachi's eyes fill with inspiration as he carefully listened and asked for clarification on each and every story we told.  He giggled with delight as I told of a funny prank his Farm Grandpa pulled on his Grandma.  And as you can imagine, while Aaron and I left the table with warm smiles of fun memories, the kids . . . well they left inspired.  So inspired that the next hour was filled with "cranks."  For some reason, they couldn't remember the word right and kept saying "cranks" instead of "pranks," which added more humor to it all.

Their pranks lacked the one thing pranks are made of:  secrecy.  These were the sorts of dialogues we were hearing as they scrambled through the house:  "Malachi, I'm going upstairs to do a crank so don't come."  Or, "Daddy, watch out when you go to bed tonight!"  The classic "crank" for a while was the "pile up everything you can find in front of the door so no one can get in or out" prank.  That one I believe was inspired from the story of college boys piling snow in front of the girls' dorm doors in the middle of the night so that no one could leave in the morning.  Not quite the same effect with stuffed animals and plastic chairs.  Anyway, we found all sorts of fun stuff under our pillows that night.  Luckily we were warned ahead of time by our little pranksters!  One of these days, they'll get good at this and then it'll be their turn to laugh!