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Pranking children is kind of cruel. I’ve always thought so, ever since that time when I was 5-years-old and my aunt and uncle were watching me and my sister while our parents went away for the weekend.
As kids go, my sister and I were mostly good, but at 8am on Saturday morning I kept asking my aunt, “What’s for dinner?” Well, repeatedly asking her that question so early in the morning caused her to want to “prank” me.
While I was in bathroom, my aunt quickly grabbed a perfectly good chocolate donut, broke it in half, put it into a pot (cooking not planting), added some water and waited. When I finally exited the bathroom, she said “Dinner. You want to know what’s for dinner? Uncle Joe just made this in the bathroom for dinner. It’s shit. You’re eating shit for dinner.”
To a 5-year-old, that donut really looked like shit floating in water. And for 30 minutes it was kind traumatic for me. Not for my aunt, of course. She was loving life. Really pleased with herself, I’m sure. But for me, I was probably all like, “Oh no, I have to eat shit. I’m never going to annoy someone about dinner ever again.”
There is no real point or moral to that story, except for the fact that I never forgot it. In fact, the things I remember most vividly from my childhood are those moments that were, in one way or another, traumatic. Maybe having had the experience made me stronger as an adult, I don’t know, but I’m sure it had a lasting effect on me in some way.