How a Practical Joke Can Save Your Marriage

Could a practical joke save your marriage?

My brother, Kevin, was famous for his practical jokes. Growing up he tied a string to the handle of a metal mug filled with water. Then taped that string to the cupboard door, so that, when you opened the cupboard, you got a face full of water.

Kevin was famous for the games he had in his office. And his office was Vice President at GE. The people he managed adored him. I bet working for him was a joy, because obviously he knew how to get work done. You don’t get to be a VP at GE without some hard work and a string of accomplishments.

But Kevin made everything a party. Life was happier in his presence. I miss him, but his spirit is with me every time I think of playing a trick on someone.

When I was growing up, we had this sprayer that you could pull out of the sink spot and squeeze the handle to both scrub and spray your dishes. When you squeeze the button, the water changed from coming out of the faucet, to coming out of the sprayer.

Kevin put a rubber band around the squeezer, and aimed it so that, when you turned on the faucet to get a drink, pshpsh! You got sprayed.

 

Made-up stories are great jokes

Water tricks were not the only practical jokes he did, however. He also weaved stories. He was the oldest and, at 16, had a driver’s license. We had a small, orange pickup truck and my other brother would ride in the cab with Kevin, while my sister, Katie, and I would pile in the back with the beach towels and snacks and head to Harvey’s Lake.

Just as Katie and I were about to get into the water, Kevin would say, “Just be careful of the Harvey’s Shark.”

Glunk! A shark!

“It’ll be OK,” he assured us, “just keep kicking. A lot. The shark won’t come near you if you’re kicking wildly.”

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go swimming.

But Katie said, “He’s just making that up to scare us.” She wanted me to come swim with her. And she took my hand tugging on it. But I noticed Katie did a lot of kicking, so I did a lot of kicking too.

 

Jokes and games can combat the heaviness of life

At night Kevin played games with us. I remember these crazy tournaments we’d have with Battling Tops. Do you know this game? There are places for 4 tops. Each of the tops has a string wound around it, then you fasten your top into the start gate and –zippetydooda—you pull the string.

Suddenly there were four plastic tops spinning about in this plastic basin. The tops could bump into each other causing crashes that ended the spinning, or even better, ejecting one of the tops completely out of the rink.

I remember Dizzy Dan. He was the coveted spinning top. Kevin played with us over and over. One night we played so long that we said, “Hey, is that the sun coming up?” It was.

I think there was also a heaviness in his heart. I could be wrong because I never talked to him about it, so I’ll ask his forgiveness if I’m wrong. But I think I felt that a lot of the jokes and games were a way to compensate for the heaviness he felt.

And it’s a worthy strategy. I’ll tell you how it impacted me.

 

When we laugh, we are free.

One time I was in charge of selling tickets for my sister’s dance performance. I was officious. I was grim and severe with my calculator and exact change. And, while there was a part of me that was simply trying to do well by my sister, there was another part of me that was stern because I wished I could be the one on stage instead of the one selling the tickets.

We’ve all had these moments:

• You post a sign above the office sink saying, “WASH YOUR OWN DAMN MUG!”
• You flout your sales goal success because you can’t get pregnant

So, when I was clinging to my role of ticket sales Kevin recognized … something. He laughed, “It’s a little too serious here,” he said. Then he walked off and played a trick on someone at the drinking fountain.

I felt called out and let off the hook simultaneously.

I felt called out because it was like Kevin saw my secret shame. In seeing my seriousness with the calculator, he was naming the shame that seriousness was hiding: I wanted to be on stage.

But the thing I want to point out today is how magical jocularity is.

Joking around, playing practical jokes, making everything into a game: when we laugh, we are free.

Free from shame. Free to be ourselves. Free to connect with other people.

So whether you use jokes and games and play to recover your freedom or to expand your freedom, they are a golden ticket to a happier happily ever after.

 

Over the years, that gumbo of memories became a life philosophy

When I notice myself getting “too serious” aka controlling the calculator and the money and the line of people or:

• Getting upset because the peanut butter is in the wrong place in the fridge
• Huffing and puffing because my husband is running late

I try to remind myself of Kevin, at the drinking fountain, spraying his friend with water.

I remember that a joke is connective tissue. I remember that laughter heals. I remember that memories can change over time. The memory with the calculator was horrible at the time because ALL I felt was called out. But now, that memory is as warm as a giant hug from my big brother because he set me free. Free from shame, and free to own my own life and the direction my life took.

I have a superpower when it comes to serious, empathetic conversations. I hear the deep hurts, and dreams, and longings that people don’t even say out loud to themselves. I’m great at that kind of connection.

But not everyone wants that DEEP stuff. And not every moment calls for the DEEP stuff.

Sometimes the strongest connections come from sharing a joke.

 

Think of how many times you’ve felt closer to someone because you share a private story

Here’s a silly one from my family. When my kids were really little, we were given a book at Christmas about Baby Jesus and it was one of those electronic books where you push the button and a different sound comes out on every page.

Well, on the page where Mary and Joseph come to the Inn Keeper and ask to stay, when you pressed the button, this bizzarro voice said, “There’s no room.” It was such an incongruous voice. Didn’t fit the baby Jesus story AT ALL.

The kids asked for the book over and over because kids love electronic gadgets more than parents hate bad literature I guess. David and I got to the place where we burst out laughing every time that crazy voice came on, “There’s no room.”

• Still. To this day, my children, my husband and me echo that bizzarro voice when there’s no more room.
• Dishwasher full? There’s no room.
• College class filled up and you were 67th on the waitlist? There’s no room.

It’s the silliest thing, but it bonds us together and it’s just because we gave ourselves permission to laugh at something even though laughter doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. I mean come on, when a woman is about to give birth and you tell her, sorry! Can’t stay here. There’s no room. That circumstance is tragic. And it’s great when you can train yourself to laugh at tragedy.

So today is all about practical jokes: how to design them, pull them off, and cultivate the memories they represent.

 

Where would a good practical joke make a difference in your life?

Where would it ease tension? Offer perspective? Become just the connective tissue you need?

First, let’s list a couple places where practical jokes are just the thing to connect you more deeply to someone you love:

• What if you’ve been the one to leave the cap off the toothpaste 16 times and your partner keeps harping on it? What if you taped 16 toothpaste caps to the bathroom mirror?
• What if you have some neighbors that you want to know better, but you just don’t know how to make friends? How about planting a flamingo in their yard? I’ll tell you a story about how flamingos became friendship glue in my neighborhood in a minute.
• What if your workplace is boring you? Is it the right thing to take a page from my brother’s playbook and tie a string onto a mug filled with water?

 

Let’s talk about why people don’t play practical jokes

Sometimes people avoid practical jokes because:

• It’s vulnerable to stick your neck out and do something out of the ordinary: easier to tow the predictable line. No one likes to look like a fool. It’s risky.
• Ideas?! Who has fresh ideas to create a good practical joke?

Are you likely or unlikely to play a practical joke? Why?

How does playing practical jokes create connective tissue?

 

Practical jokes are connective tissue

Let me tell you a story about my son. When he was 2 years old, and his sister was in school all day, it was he and me. All day. And we were a pair. He was my buddy running errands and we always included a bagel at the bagel store where he got his slathered with sundried tomato. While we ate our bagels, we’d play I spy with my little eyes and see the bright blue sky in the poster with the yellow sunflower, or we’d see the grey of the pepper shaker on the table.

While I washed dishes or made dinner, he told me stories about his imaginary friends, Carey and Jeff. These stories were AMAZING! Carey and Jeff were always jumping off cliffs and falling off ships. They always died. But then they’d come back in the next story.

During this era of life with my son I felt so, so close to him. And then he turned 13. He started watching Family Guy and laughing at things that hurt my feelings and I thought, who is this guy that once woke up from his nap and just wanted to snuggle in my arms for 30 minutes on the red rocking chair while he cleared the cobwebs from his eyes? Where is my cuddle bug?

And then, one night, at 2:00am, I reached into my closet to get my robe because I couldn’t sleep and I was gonna go read my book. And SNAP! Holy cow! I thought my closet was blowing up! But it was just one of the tiny poppers that you can throw down onto the ground on the Fourth of July.

When I mentioned my nighttime terror at breakfast, my son, the practical joker smiled. He didn’t admit to being the culprit, but I knew it was him and he knew that I knew.

The next month of my life I was treated to explosions all over my house. In the kitchen cupboard when I went to reach for a mug for my tea. In the car when I opened the glovebox. When I sat down on the toilet and it exploded, I yelled.

Then I laughed. Because, as many memories as I have with the sundried tomato-spread two year old, I could see how much this 13 year old boy was exploding with love for me still.

He wasn’t willing to sit on my lap for 30 minutes anymore, but he cast me as an essential character in his unfolding life. He loved it when he heard a pop at one end of the house and I came running to tackle him and wrestle him and hug him if only for a brief moment.

That is the magic glue of a practical joke.

I think a good practical joke creates connective tissue. It helps you feel like you belong. Even when my teenage son was driving me crazy with pranks, I could feel the love he felt for me. He felt safe to trick me.

Here’s an example:

I am convinced I’m good friends with my neighbors partly because of all the practical jokes we’ve shared. It all started when our next door neighbor, Tom, showed us a couple of gorilla suits.

One of our mutual neighbors, Mike, had a live cam hidden in the woods. Mike was a good photographer and wanted to capture some wildlife on film.

Tom, the guy with the gorilla suit he’d rented at the party store, reminds me of my brother Kevin. He’s always scheming and I think he still inhabits a good deal of that 13-year-old energy that’s looking for ways to blow things up.

Tom gathered us all together and we rode ATV’s up to the site of the hidden camera. Donning our gorilla gear, we danced in front of the camera, laughing.

Days later our camera-owning neighbor went to his hidden camera to retrieve his photos and see what he’d captured. There we were.

But animal pranks didn’t end there, and Tom set up one of those pink, plastic flamingos on the corner where our road takes a bend. Then he created a poster like for a lost dog or kitten, “Have you seen my missing friend?” and he hung up that poster in our local post office where all of us who live so rurally, need to go regularly to pick up our mail.

I laughed hard at the poster.

Before long, flamingos were planted in our yards. I remember waking up to snow one morning, but there were 3 bright pink heads peeking out beneath the fallen flakes.

The flamingos showed up in all sorts of surprising places. Causing laughter every time.

This familiarity creates trust, right. And a sense of belonging. When we shared a dinner, our friend, Kathy, brought over a bunch of silly mouths and mustaches and we had fun taking pictures.

I decided to pair the pranks with my need to bond with my teenage children and I rented a helium tank and bought a giant bag of 125 balloons. My husband, my son, my daughter and I spent the better part of an evening filling our living room with balloons. Then we filled our car as full as it would go with those balloons and drove to our Tom’s house to transfer those balloons from our car to theirs.

Back home we went for another round of balloons and up to Mike’s house, where his dog began to bark during our transfer. Oh no! My whole family was frozen, and I had that feeling like when I was a teenager myself and I was TPing my friend’s homes. We were gitty. But the dog didn’t give us away, and we managed to get the balloons into Mike’s truck.

One more house. We got balloons into Kathy’s car and then we went home to giggle in anticipation of the morning when they wouldn’t fit into their car to drive away.

I’m not sure what gave us away, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was my son’s impish smile again. That son that bonds me to the world with his laughter.

What about you? What style of practical joke would suit you? Are you like my neighbors with their flamingos? Or more like my brother at the drinking fountain?

Who in your life would benefit from the warm hug of a practical joke?