Prank Warfare

My dear friend, Dewey, and I have an ongoing war of low-level pranks. Every morning around 8 o'clock, which is when his shift starts, there's an endless variety of sneaking up on each other, hiding as the other person tries to sneak, bouncing foam balls off people's heads, the occasional appearance of a very dried orange, and a lot of smack talk.

Usually, I win the round of the day. Which is only to be expected when I have 11 siblings worth of experience, and he has only one daughter.


Well, yesterday, at 6 o'clock in the morning, I came in to find that the cups we've been using have been replaced by cups that are just a little too small for the cuply ration of coffee that our machine doles out. It still fits in the cup, but it's only a drop or two less than overflowing.

When 8 o'clock rolled around, I spotted Dewey carefully initiating his other round of daily pranking, by arranging a handful of small plastic cats and llamas on Tammy's desk. Dewey is rarely aware of more than one thing at a time, so I walked up beside him and waited for him to notice me.

He finished his prank, turned around, and promptly jumped out of his skin.

"You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"Ah, come on, Dewey; you know you'll miss this!" (Dewey is one of the reps who took the boss up on the offer to work from home. We don't yet know when he and the others are leaving, but there's a lot of them.)

"Yeah, sure! I'm going to miss almost having a heart attack!"

"As long as you miss in it in the right direction."

"Huh?"

"You said you're going to miss almost having a heart attack," I reply, raising an eyebrow and smirking. He got the joke then, and doubled over laughing. I walked to the kitchen to get a second cup of coffee.

As I said, these cups are a little too small for the amount they're supposed to hold, so I'm mincing along, eyes all focused on the cup, when Dewey jumps around the corner.

"HA!" he bellows.

Coffee. Coffee everywhere.

He cleaned it up, and we spent the next twenty minutes discussing whether or not he can apologize and do a victory dance at the same time. I'm quite certain those are mutually exclusive activities.