I was re-telling this story to Tamara recently and I said that I should post it on here to share with those of you who have never heard it before. It is indeed my most fondest memory from the year I spent at EBCI here in Moncton back in 1997/1998. Here’s the story of one of the best practical jokes ever done at that school (even if I do say so myself).
I had heard a story from someone who had apparently either seen or participating in filling a dorm room at UNB with popcorn. Now, I’ve never seen a UNB dorm room but I am going to guess they are relatively small. Filling it would still have been a lot of work. Regardless, it inspired me to try and do the same thing to someone at EBCI while I was a student there. I didn’t live on campus since it was in Moncton but I did know plenty of people who were up to the task and so over the Christmas holidays, a great prank began.
It started with a massive visit to the bulk barn. I, and I kid you not, bought enough un-popped popcorn that it emptied the bin that was in the store. Years later I would visit the same store and the guy would remember me for buying all the popcorn. I teamed up with a fellow classmate (Rob Durdle) and my would-become-ex-wife Jennifer Vautour, and we hit the dorm rooms at the school over the holidays. We broke up the prank into two parts. Popping the corn, and filling the room. With two air poppers going in the victim’s room, it wasn’t fast enough so we had Jenn work with a friend of hers upstairs (I believe in Rob’s room but I could be mistaken) to pop popcorn up there as well and bring it down in bags. We popped and popped and popped so much popcorn that we tripped the electrical box for both the floor of our victim, and the upstairs floor. There was a lot of heat, and a lot of popcorn.
Now, the rooms were big and we knew there was no way we’d get it anywhere near full, but that really wasn’t the point. The point was to get enough in there that he’d have popcorn in his room for the rest of his year. I believe we succeeded.
Bag after bag of popcorn came from upstairs and eventually we started getting low. We decided that since we couldn’t fill the room, we’d put it everywhere else. Here are some places that Mr. Shawn Simpson (our victim) found his popcorn:
- In his closet
- Pockets of every shirt/pants he had in his closet
- His bed
- His fridge
- His briefcase
- The 3.5″ floppy disk drive in his briefcase
- His shoes
- His pillows
- Several un-popped kernels were inserted into his toothpaste
- Just about everywhere you can think of
We had the above photo taken which was eventually published in the school’s yearbook for that year (which is where the above scan comes from). The stage was set, now we just had to see his reaction. Remember, we did this over Christmas holidays so he was in Bathurst while many were still in the dorms.
The day he was set to return, I just “happened” to be at the dorm that day (which in itself was a bit suspicious since I NEVER hung out there). Me and Rob both wanted to make sure we would be there when he opened his door. Well, when he arrived at the dorm, we got a surprise. His parents came in with him. Knowing that they were a little uppity made this prank even oh so much better.
Simpson opened the door and was floored. He was completely and totally shocked. His parents were none too impressed and me and Rob were like “wow, this sucks” knowing full well we were the ones responsible. We all looked around and around and pretended like we knew nothing about it as Shawn was just flabbergasted by the whole thing. We had achieved our goal, but what made this the absolute best prank was what transpired next.
In and effort to conceal our involvement, me and Rob volunteered to help Simpson clean the mess up. We got bags from the janitor and some brooms and we basically cleaned the whole thing up with him. His mom, who was so impressed by us helping out, went out and BOUGHT US PIZZA AS A THANK YOU!!!! Yes folks, not only did we do a kick ass prank, we got a free pizza meal from the mark’s mom! When all was said and done, that just made the whole thing so much better. I could not believe his mom, and our victim, were that gullible.
When Simpson found out who did it, he was pissed. That stuck with him for awhile until him and Jenn ultimately got me back with the whole beaver abduction gag (to be told later perhaps). Several years later, I spoke to Simpson online and he had a much better attitude about it. He said that his younger brother had used his fridge when he went to college. Shawn was cleaning it out for him before he left and some popcorn fell out of it and he laughed. Damn that was funny.
An awesome prank for college with a kickass ending. Plus, it’s hellish easy to clean up, especially if you get free food 🙂
