My roommate likes playing pranks. The only problem is that the person at the other end of the prank usually finds out and in turn reciprocates. This is all well and good except for the fact that I am rather close to my roommate (yes, relationally but also geographically). I have never been a fan of practical jokes. I just don't gain the same satisfaction that some people get from the push & pull they experience with another person.

Now I have cute little crickets crawling around the room; in the bathroom, in the closet, on the wall, on the couch, on the desk, on the floor. This doesn't bother me. Hell, I think they're kind of cute. I just don't like the fact that people would wrong someone and get wronged in return for fun. I think practical jokes are gay. Being the non-confrontational kind, I enjoy as little competition or friction with my peers as possible.

I never really enjoyed anything that required me to compete with friends (with the exception of cards). I never was a big fan of sports video games, but if I ever did play them, I could never play against the person sitting next to me. It was either we played on the same team against the computer, or I wouldn't play.

I have bad memories of waking up thinking it had snowed, just to find out that this snow was made of tissue material, and instead of playing in it, I had to clean it up. Trinity and I would work side by side dragging along garbage bags twice our size. As a result of insufficient height, toilet paper would be left in our tall pine tree, and it would come down in pieces for the remainder of the year. Of course these playful practical jokes weren't done by any of my friends nor were they done by my little sister's 2nd grade friends. Our friends were nowhere near driving age anyway, and the thought of trashing somebody's house as a joke probably would cause them to soil themselves. We knew it wasn't my friends and we were pretty dang sure it wasn't sister's friends. They were our two older brothers' friends. When Trey and Jason were too busy, or not home, Trinity and I got recruited for the job.

My dislike for practical jokes probably stems from my inability to separate the harmful from the harmless. It's similar to sarcasm. On a few occasions sarcasm from friends has almost made me cry. While everyone else is having a good laugh... or not, I see that it's probably just sarcasm. My mind tries to convince my heart that it's harmless and that it's all a joke, but I just can't do it. Never could. I hate it. I really hate it.