Pranked, again.

For those of you wondering why the heck I decided to write a blog, it is because I feel I have enough life experiences and funny thoughts to share for the purpose of bringing smiles to each of your beautiful faces. So that is my general purpose here, I want you to be happy.  Sometimes this will mean I “need” to share personal stories, psh, easy. So, to give you “the story” background, a little about me. I am a youth leader and have been involved with various youth ministries for about 8 years now. I just attended our junior and senior high White Elephant Party, and so begins “the story.”

 

This White Elephant Party (from now on be referred to as “WEP”), was not unlike any other WEP that people go to. Everyone showed up with a gift and everyone was greeted by an array of fun Christmas music selections and a table of assorted cookies. If you are not familiar with this type of party, click here for instructions. There were approximately 40 people comprised of youth and youth leaders involved in this year’s party so it was going to be a long game of gift exchanging….or perhaps more appropriately defined as “gift pranking”.

If you are unfamiliar with the WEP, you may think that Christmas party gifts will come looking like this (image found online):

But these are what they will more likely look like (images found online):

There were the cute gifts of stuffed animals, candy, and picture frames. There were also the trash gifts, for instance, someone showed up at church with an empty box, found all the trash laying around and then wrapped it up (” trash” is not limited to fire extinguisher and random street sign).

At one point one of the guys stuck his hand into a gift bag to pull out the pretty tissue paper and quickly withdrew his hand, withdrawing, or slinging to the ground, rather, a dead rat. Luckily, one of the girls (yes it was a girl) found a dead rat that morning in her garage so she was spared the inconvenience of finding a last minute gift (which was my case)…so in one way we all received a bonus gift that night: the plague.

We finally got down to the last 5 or so gifts, when the game became“UWEP” or “Ultimate White Elephant Party”…at least in my opinion. One of the younger high school guys grabbed a package, opened it, and promptly looked confused. Then everyone started laughing. The “gift” was comprised of 3 pages printed out from the website called “Mail Order Husband” and was complete with a user name and password. Now, if you are reading this and you know me, you may have guessed where this is going, but I think it is probably worth it to keep reading. Each of the 3 pages contained lists of men’s pictures with a little blurb on what they want in a bride for the purpose of making some lucky woman’s choice a little easier…some examples are:

Anonymous: “I’m looking for a girl named “Julie…It’s just easier that way. I got this “Julie tattoo last year, and would prefer to not deal with it…”

Daryl: “I’d like to meet a woman with money so we can have fun…”

Philip: “I live in a crappy basement apartment and I’m hoping to go somewhere warm and sunny. If you have money and you aren’t in Canada please email me.”

Mike: “I will be starting a new life shortly and want you to be part of it I am very romantic and physically fit…but I won’t be available for maybe 18 months, but I’m happy to write letters. My parole is next months, so I’m hoping to be available sooner.”

It is likely that you have now figured out that this was an account that another person created for me, and the password to the already set up account was given to a high school kid. Before this point in the exchange, I was laid back and hanging out, but as soon as I heard what was at stake, namely my freedom, you better believe I did everything I could to get those papers! Luckily, I did NOT have to beat up any kids (or leaders) and was successful in retrieving the little packet and am now glaring at it while it is lying next to this laptop.

Now, you may think that this is too much to handle, but I am unfortunately a veteran of these types of gifts. What I have yet to mention is the highlighted gift from last year’s WEP: An E-Harmony account was created for me and the log-in name and password became “THE gift” for 2011.

So by the end of the night, I was jealous of the boy who got the dead rat, compared to the list of rats I received, it didn’t look all that bad. 

Do you have any stories that top this? I would LOVE to hear them, misery loves company, right?! Please post them below. And if you have any good ideas on how I can return the "favor," please post them!

Fine print: Reading this may give you temporary side effects not limited to a possible fear of the plague, high school girls, too much sugar, and white elephant parties. After very, very little research, I should mention that the mail order husband site is a joke and not a real site, though the aforementioned situation is still hilarious and in needing of payback. Although dead animals were brought to the WEP, no animals were harmed in the planning or enjoyment of the WEP. I have nothing against E-Harmony and have a ton of friends who met through that dating site, the humor obviously comes from the fact that an account was created for me and the power given to a minor.