How do you handle a prank?

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I hate to always advertise my blog, but I really love the input that people give.

Anyways, my blog entry today is about a phone prank that happened to me a month ago and just how confusing it all was. You can read it at http://lifeontheothersideofthewall.blogspot.com

So the call was on April 1st? If it were me I would probably be upset at first and freaking out because I don't illegally download anything. Once I figured out it was an April Fools I would be OK but a little ticked. People who know me well enough to feel comfortable playing pranks should know that something like that would cause an anxiety attack!

I don't think it was very funny for the person to prank you like that, knowing how freaked you were. They should have called you at some point and let you know they sent it.

"Payback is a bi***," is how I handle it especially if it is a repeat offender. I can let a single time go or maybe even twice, but three strikes, and you are OUT! IF you know who did it and his or her name and address and telephone number, you can place sexually suggestive ads on Craiglist, etc. I know how to do all kinds of neat things with phones, computers, traffic cameras, locks or anything else of a technological nature. I also have an evil mind when it comes to dealing with bullies, so I'm not the kind of person to be repeatedly messed with. I will defend myself, and a good offense is the best defense.

I'd just let it go, and take it with a grain of salt.

Things like that don't get passed me easily.

If someone does "pull one over" on me and it's in good humor, I'm usually impressed.
If it's not in good humor, I'm usually annoyed.

I had the problem of being a very tough and unpopular teacher for a brief time, so I had the problem of kids vandalizing my house. Things got SO BAD that we invested in an infrared camera system. It happened ONCE after that. I burned the video to DVD, went to the cops, and NEVER had a problem since.

We ended up moving anyway due to unrelated problems. What happened not long after we put the house on the market and within two weeks of my wife having our second child premature was that someone called CPS. We're fairly certain it was a church member, but we just don't have any "smoking-gun" kind of evidence to make a big case out of it. Basically this person or persons exploited the fact that our son has had frequent recurring ear infections and tubes only made the condition a lot more visible, not to mention our financial troubles and our concern for our premie daughter. If it was a prank, it was a very bad one. It wasn't an isolated incident, either. This happened three times total. I suspect it MIGHT have had something to do with one of my coworkers, but I really don't know. My employer ended up confronting my coworkers with this incident, and they all denied any involvement (of course). However, it NEVER happened again.

People wonder why I don't seem to have much of a sense of humor. I've had to deal with a lot of this garbage all through my life. The difference between me now and me then is that I've learned how to talk to police and lawyers. Lawyer up if you need to. I say you don't have to agree with my views any more than I have to agree with yours, but bullying on ANY level is intolerable.

On April 1st, I hardly take anything seriously if it's bad news. Same as if I took something seriously that day and then found out it was a joke, I let it go and just take it as relief it wasn't real.

This actually took place March 23rd.

In your blog you mention the reaction you get to phone messages, specifically the deathly fear you've had in the past. You also openly mention your autism.

Assuming your "friend", who subsequently slipped up and let it out, that they were the prankster, also knew these two tidbits of information about you, then all I can say to that is that is not the behaviour of a friend. Knowing how you would react to it, makes it vicious and mean spirited and not just an innocent prank.

Personally, I would tell them to get the hell out of my life and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

you mean pulling it off?

I hated April first becuase it was just an excuse for other kids to bully me and when I told on them I was told to lighten up and take a joke. If I tried to pull a prank on someone else, I got in trouble.

It drives me crazy when Deviant Art changes my icon every April 1st. People who know me in real life know better not to pull pranks on me becuase I will either have a panic attack or go into a rage. I've done "innocent" pranks on people in the past but now I see how it is wrong. April Fools needs to be done away with for good.

Last edited by PunkyKat on 01 May 2010, 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That doesn't sound like a prank to me.

Anyway though, why a tough teacher?

It's fine to challenge your students but there are teachers who are so challenging and so difficult to get a good grade from that the students just get discouraged, their self confidence drops and the turn away from the subject.

I was only a tough teacher when I had to be. My subject was extracurricular (band) and I was partly victim to the scum I inherited. And I don't mean a LOT of students. It only takes one or two to ruin your day. I wasn't the "cool" teacher, and I was actually only tough on the "study hall" kids. Part of my troubles came from these kids and not the band kids. I remember one day some of the study hall kids rode by my house on bikes not long after we got the security system. I pointed out where the cameras were, and I never had a problem from that bunch again, in our out of school! What happened later on was that one of my percussionists dropped out and the other (they'd been very destructive throughout my time with them) continued to give me trouble because his mom was making him take band and he didn't really want to be there. That's when I "expressed concern" to the principal that "his failing grades might warrant a little extra study time." He was gone by spring semester, and morale rose exponentially. It was sometime around the beginning of summer when the last incident happened. Those two and a friend of theirs tried to get around the camera system, but it was still too easy to identify them. That's when we went to the cops, and for the next year while we lived there we didn't have any more problems.

We moved out of town for economic reasons--why pay $1,000/month mortgage and high city taxes when you can buy an acre and a trailer out in the country outright? It wasn't long before it got around that we'd moved, and EVERYONE we knew started asking where we were. We were intentionally vague about it because we feared that certain people, no idea WHY, still held a grudge against us. We keep a PO box on the opposite end of town just so we don't have give a physical address. We live on our OWN terms and expect people to leave us alone.

Why would you point out the security cameras, if they were merely riding by on their bikes? This sounds to me like you were expecting trouble from them and basically giving them the message that you are judging them before they've done anything wrong. In other words, your behaviour towards them can be seen by them as antagonistic.



And you are surprised that you weren't liked in return for this? If you look at it logically, the kid didn't want to be there. He was only doing it for his mom. Why go to the principal with your "concern", basically antagonizing the kid? It doesn't make sense.




What exactly did they do when they "got around your camera system" that warranted you calling the cops on them?

I like pranks as long as they don't hurt anything of mine, or me, or anyone else. I usually laugh at them, even if I'm confused and slightly hurt, I just assume it's in good humour and I just don't understand it.

I've gotten trouble from this particular bunch before, really no more than threats but I have every reason to believe that they'd been involved before. People tend to brag, and word does get around. There was no reason for them to come to my house and it made me feel very uncomfortable that they did. That was done purposefully because there was nothing I could do to them off school grounds. I think I'd casually mentioned to someone else what I'd done and one of these kids, or a relative, or a friend overheard the conversation. They didn't really believed it until I opened my front door enough they could see my TV and their own faces on it. The last thing I heard one of them say to another was "Don't tell ___" There was nothing antagonistic about it, no "I dare you..." kind of thing going on. One would be stupid to get involved KNOWING what I was able to do. And we had some REALLY stupid kids in the area.

I wasn't liked BEFORE any of that happened. The administrators were making it very difficult for me to effectively do my job by insisting I keep these kids in my classroom, and in my situation my classes were privileges, not rights, and I was supposed to have the authority to give them the boot if I needed to (it's not like they needed the credit to graduate or anything--just an enrichment activity that they were supposed to enjoy, not disrupt). I repeatedly tried to enforce rules, get administration involved when there absolutely no options left, and got no backup at all when it came to those particular students. At this particular school, high grades are requisite for extracurricular activities, but of course, it is seldom enforced. I was desperate to keep my group unified, I had a card, and I played it. I've got nothing to be ashamed of for doing the right thing, whatever it took, no matter what happened, to keep a good group of kids together.

The reason I'm not a popular teacher has to do with my difficulty of getting on the same level as my students and setting and maintaining boundaries. People who are better at reading social cues don't really have that problem. My youngest students never gave me any trouble, and things were going really well in that department. It was only certain key intermediate and varsity students that really caused trouble. If not for certain key "bad seeds," my popularity or lack thereof wouldn't have made a bit of difference. If I'd been better at playing political games, things might have gone better for me, but it doesn't really matter now anyway. I HAVE been moderately successful with private instruction. My kids now see me as the laid-back, easy-going, kind uncle type. Little kids respond better to me, and I have NO idea why--it works, so I don't question it! I used to avoid that group because I was scared of them. The irony is that's where my best following is.

I also followed some of my beginners after I had to leave. I'm the kind of guy that looks for musical talent in ALL kids, even the ones who cause trouble, and I do try to work with them to develop those talents. I had such a tiny group in intermediate band class that all I could do was work with each student individually or in small groups. I got attitude every way I turned, but I kept insisting on maintaining discipline, practicing, and reaching performance goals. I'd been teaching one student who was really capable, if not somewhat air-headed, how to play multi-percussion compositions, which is not something really do at the beginner/intermediate level. He was enormously successful for as long as I worked with him, and I was really sad to hear the new BD kicked him out because "I was sick of his attitude." So don't think I just give up on students. When behavior gets so destructing that equipment becomes unusable and classroom facilities become damaged or vandalized and other students feel bullied or distracted and talk about quitting because of all the abuse they have to take from a disturbed classmate, I'm not left with many options. If you were tormented by the same two people every day, you'd want a teacher to do something about it, right?

To get around my camera system, they did things like cover their faces with their hands, walking backwards--really dumb stuff. Even if they'd worn ski masks or pantyhose, it would still be easy to identify them based on height and build, walking gate, posture, and so on. They might have gotten away with it except my particular system had so much infrared energy it lit up a dark front yard like it was the middle of the day. One kid actually looked up directly into the camera!