(My dad travels a lot for work. He is also practically blind without his glasses. One night, while asleep in a hotel room, he thinks he hears one of us kids crying and stumbles out the door of his room to find us. It is then that he wakes up properly and realises he is locked out of his room, without his glasses, in an unfamiliar corridor, in an unfamiliar hotel, wearing only his undies. For fifteen minutes, he gropes around walls, doors, and fire hydrants until he eventually finds his way to the stairs, and then along another corridor until he finally gets to the reception desk. There’s no one there — it’s the middle of the night — but he can hear some noise in the back room.)

Dad: “Hello? 

(Two employees come out, quietly chortling, and look unsurprised to see Dad standing there in his smalls.)

Dad: “Sorry, mate, I just need some help getting back into my room; I’ve managed to lock myself out.”

Employee: “Yeah, mate, we’ve been watching you on the security camera and were wondering how long it’d take you to get down here.” *laughs hysterically*

(Fortunately, my dad has a wicked sense of humour and happily tells this story to anyone.)

On busy days, my boss has me call in pizza for the entire office. That’s about 300 or so people. The pizza shops in the area are generally super considerate and work with me to get the pizza delivered and/or in stages, so even if I only have an hour’s notice, we can start serving on time. This round, we order cheese, pepperoni, and supreme, though the supreme is only ten pies — about a quarter of the numbers the other two have.

As we get serving, I’m called away briefly, and when I get back, my coworker says that none of the supreme pizzas were delivered. At this point, I’m too tired and frazzled to doubt him, especially when three other people back him up, so I take ten of the pizzas back and explain the situation to the employees there.

One employee says he’s absolutely sure he made those ten supremes and that I must be mistaken, which I deny and explain that all my coworkers who were serving confirmed. We go back and forth for a couple of minutes before the employee offers to call his manager. Once off the phone, he tells me his manager will be in tomorrow and will be able to process a partial refund, which was all I wanted since the other pizzas were fine.

The next day, as I’m walking to my desk, I notice something: a plate with pizza leftover from yesterday, and it’s definitely not just cheese or pepperoni. I ask my coworker about it, and she tells me one of the servers gave it to her yesterday. The same one who told me we didn’t get any supreme whatsoever.

I talk to the coworker who was serving the day before, and he explains that he and the others thought it would be funny to play a joke on me. I’m royally ticked off at this point because I had to make an extra trip out to the pizza place to return the pizza, I was going to have to make another that day for the refund, I was stressed about the order being wrong, I stressed out the poor employees who had been kind enough to get all these pizzas for us on an hour’s notice, and I undoubtedly sounded like one of those people NAR loves to make fun of.

In the end, I swallowed my pride and went back to the pizza shop to apologize and explain what happened instead of getting a refund. If I could’ve, I would have dragged every employee who lied to me by the ear to that shop to apologize, as well.

This is a story my dad told me from when he was a college freshman in the late ’80s. Apparently, my uncle, who was still in high school, had gotten himself a pet tarantula around that time and had it in some sort of cage-type setup in their kitchen.

One day, not long before spring break, my grandmother was tasked with feeding it and, naturally, the tarantula jumped out of its cage and fled right into a sink filled with dishes and soapy water and died. 

When my dad came home not long after, he ended up taking the tarantula’s corpse and shellacking it to a piece of wood in a way that made it look like it was still alive. He then brought it back with him to school a few days earlier than he’d initially planned. During those few extra days, he put up several “Missing Pet” signs for it all over campus. 

As people in his dorm started returning, he would sneak the dead tarantula into their rooms while he pretended to help them with their luggage, and, since this wasn’t out of the ordinary for him, they never suspected anything until they ended up finding it. He told me he lost count of how many people he pranked in his dorm before word got out of what he was doing.

(When my dad is at university, one of his friends, [Friend #1], is blind, and his other friend, [Friend #2], is known for doing pretty bad stuff when he’s had a few drinks. One night, after they’ve been out for a large amount of beer, they get hungry and stop at the local chip shop, which is next to a university and so is full of people at 3:00 am. [Friend #2] decides he doesn’t want to wait in line, so he grabs [Friend #1]’s blind stick and walks to the front of the line, in a trick I’m sure everyone has heard of. After he is served, my dad starts to help [Friend #1] into the shop, since [Friend #2] only got food for himself, and [Friend #1] trips over the doorstep.)

Counter Guy: *laughing* “You’d almost think he was the blind one.”

Friend #1: “I am; that p***k has my stick!”

(To quote my dad when he told this story, “It’s amazing how quickly you sober up when a six-foot bloke from a chip shop chases you down the road.” The guy also gave [Friend #1] free chips, not realising they were friends. I’d like to make it clear that they didn’t plan this; it just kind of worked out in [Friend #1]’s favour. Thirty years later, my dad is still good friends with both, and they’re both great people, but it’s fun to remember that your parents can be as bad as you sometimes.)

(At the drive-thru one day, a car with three young men in it orders a single large drink. I rather suspect what’s about to happen, so I’m ready. Sure enough, it’s the “fire in the hole” prank. I reach both hands out the window and neatly catch the cup.)

Me: “For me? Thank you! I could use a drink, and this is my favorite one.” 

(Cue surprised looks from the men in the car.)

Driver: “How did you…?”

Me: “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

(They drove off, and I enjoyed my free drink.)