PRANKING MY BROTHER

Generally, I don't recommend playing practical jokes on people who know you well. They know how to get even.

When I was teetering on forty, a flyer from a well-known photography company appeared in our mailbox.

             FREE GLAMOUR SITTING

Free stuff.  I'm in, with my husband's enthusiastic approval. A lot of ladies I knew responded to the invitation. Students from an area cosmetology college did our hair (but only the part around your face that would show in the photo) and applied makeup. The photographer provided racks of accessories, from pearls and lace to denim and rhinestones, and feather boas.

About six weeks later they rolled back through town with the proofs where we learned the fine print. I wasn't the only one who mistakenly thought I'd get some free pictures. My husband was persuaded to purchase a framed canvas of his favorite, and we bought a couple of loose 8 x 10s and all the proofs.

I gave one to my mother and told her it was my thirty-nine and holding shot. There is something about sitting in an alluring pose with a professional photographer tilting your chin just so, and giving you a specific spot to look at that changes your entire demeanor, especially when combined with soft lighting and out-of-focus effects. Mom spent way too many words saying she didn't recognize her daughter. She said I ought to send one of the poses to my brother and see if he knew who it was.

My cousin from Denver just happened to be visiting. So we hatched a plan. At first, the idea was to anonymously mail the picture from an address he wouldn't recognize.  My cousin graciously said one of her friends wouldn't mind if we used her return address. Naturally, she would need to carry the envelope home with her and have it postmarked from the city.

Then I got the idea of messing with him. What kind of message could we write on the back that would make my brother think a strange woman had sent him a picture of herself?  We considered and discarded the idea of saying something like 'Wish you were here.'  We didn't want his wife to accuse him of something he hadn't done. Finally, we settled on 'Thinking of you.' My cousin wrote on the back of the picture in her lovely script and dotted the i's with cute little hearts. 💜 💜

Two days later it belatedly occurred to me we had excluded a vital participant from the joke. I called my sister-in-law and confessed what we had done. She promised to keep an eye on the mail. Several days went by. I had stopped imagining possible scenarios of my brother pulling that picture out of the envelope.

His wife called. In a barely audible voice, she said, "Lisa, the picture is here. How long am I supposed to keep him guessing?"
I said I thought a week or ten days would be about right.
"I can't do that. He's about to stroke out," she said.

An hour later he called.  "You got me good.  REAL GOOD."

He went on to tell me that when he opened the envelope, his first instinct was to stuff the package in the garbage disposal. (It probably had something to do with another story about strange high heels in his hotel room. He was innocent!) He couldn't destroy it because the mail was on the counter where his wife had laid it. She was sure to ask what was in the manila envelope. By that time she had sauntered into the kitchen, and he managed to choke out that someone was playing a rotten trick on him.

First, he investigated the return address. A grade school friend lived in the Denver area. He looked the address up, and it didn't match. It didn't occur to him that our relatives in Colorado would play a joke on him. Then he combed through the business cards he had exchanged with female engineers over the past few years. None were from Denver. None should be sending him enticing pictures.


Meanwhile, his wife had nonchalantly examined the picture and read the intriguing message on the reverse. "I think this looks like your sister," she blabbed.

He told me he scrutinized the photo even more closely and disagreed with her. He retrieved his family memento shoebox, and a magnifying glass, and compared every picture he had of me to the one in his hand. Through the process of comparison, he proved the glamour image wasn't me.

About that time their daughter came home from school. My sister-in-law stuck the picture in her face and said, "Quick. Who is this?"

"Aunt Lisa," she responded.

As practical jokes go, that one was a great success. I spent the next ten years waiting for him to get even. He sure knows how to keep a person in suspense.