Mal's Pranks

Yesterday, he got on a kick about "pranks." I'm sure this is an idea that he's picked up from youtubers. He kind-of gets it, but not really.

I'm in the process of swapping out phones. I really expected my previous phone to die about a week before my new phone arrived (on March 24). But it rallied, and it's been going strong ever since.

This wouldn't really matter, except that my old phone has an app that I have to have to log into different work accounts. There's something that will expire eventually that will allow me to transfer that app to the new phone.

Until that happens, I'm keeping the old one plugged in and hoping for the best every day when I make the 6m commute to the office.

While I was busy working today, Mal decided that it would be a hilarious prank to swap out my phone for our Nintendo Switch.

I'd try to log in, and be greeted by Mario instead.

Boy, I would have been so confused!

Laura was totally supportive of the idea at first. Then he mentioned that my phone was plugged in, and she remembered why that old phone is so important.

She recommended he wait until I was out of the room, then he could swap out my new phone.

He agreed, gave up, and told me about it later.

I should post pictures of them both. In the meantime, you can compare an article with a picture of the OnePlus 7t to a picture of Nintendo Switch.

I probably wouldn't have been fooled, but it would still have been pretty funny.

Later, we'd drifted apart. They were in his room. Mal rushed back and found me shut in my office, with all the doors closed and curtains drawn. He told me to be quiet and pretend I was asleep.

Then he rushed back to tell Laura that I was out like a light.

I suspected that this was a ruse to get her to brush his teeth before bed. She does too much without any thanks, so I wandered into the kitchen area and started to make loud fake-snore noises to let her
know I was awake.

He seems to have figured out enough about hide-and-seek to realize that that sort of thing is a dead give-away. He rushed back and demanded that I retreat to my office. My mission was accomplished, so I obeyed orders.

Then Laura remembered our party lights. She'd plugged them in earlier to make our Mario Italian Friday Fest picnic a little more festive. Neither of us wanted to leave them burning overnight.

She wanted to get outside to unplug them, but Carol wanted out also.

Carol's really good at this. She'll disappear for hours, cavort with strangers, bring back dangerous germs, and probably decimate the local bird population.

She's nowhere as deadly as Callie was, and probably not even as bad as Rudy. But social isolation also applies to cats.

So I popped out of my hidey-hole to herd her out of the way.

Laura escaped. Carol didn't.

Mal was broken-hearted that I ruined "our" "prank."

I tried to turn it into a teaching moment and explain that sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture and understand that the prank just is not as important as what's really going on.

His mind isn't ready for that sort of thinking.