I spent a little time today catching up on my blog reading when I stumbled across my own blog and realized that it's been ten days since I've written a post! Egad! So, to make up for this monumental blunder, I will not subject you to just any average post about any average topic. Today, instead, I will regale you with an account of my earlier days when life might not have been quite as boring as it might seem today.

I present, for your approval, the best practical joke I have pulled.

I've always been a bit of a practical jokester, and I may post some of my other exploits in later entries, but today I will focus on the Reverend and the Automobile. In the early 90's when I was a leader in a local college ministry group, a new Campus Minister was assigned to our unit. Unlike previous occupants of that position who were sent there as punishment or to be hidden, this minister actually wanted to be involved in collegiate ministry, and he was young enough to not only remember what college life was like, but his outgoing personality was a good fit for our fledgling group at the time.

Not everyone is perfect, however, and one of his "flaws", if you could call it that, was his obsession with his car. Our campus ministry facility had a small parking area out back, and it was not covered, so in the heat of the Texas summer and early fall, cars parked in the lot would get very, very hot inside. Not long after arriving in the post, our minister had reserved parking signs made so he could mark the first spot in the lot, the one closest to the door, for his car. Not much later, however, he started the habit of moving the sign to spots under the few trees that were next to the lot where he might be able to park in the shade. Given that he wasn't a morning person, he would often not arrive until mid- to late-morning after some students had already arrived and taken those spots for themselves. Soon, it became something of a running joke for students and staff to arrive on campus before the minister, guess where he would want to park that day, park in that spot, and then move the reserved parking sign to another space. What ensued was a friendly game of "avoid the parking notice" as the minister started leaving "do not park here" notices on the cars of those who parked in his "reserved" spot and moved the sign, when he remembered where it was the day before.

His first April Fool's day in office, a group of us came up with a bold plan. One of us drove a small orange Fiat that we figured several of us could lift and carry a short distance fairly easily. Between the parking lot and the rear entrance to the facility was a large grassy area where we would occasionally play volleyball. Several of us arrived that morning, carried my friend's car and set it in the middle of the lawn area, then took the reserved parking sign and planted it in the lawn right in front of the orange car. We also did some stuff to his office, but the car definitely got the most attention.

Now, to quote Bill Cosby, I told you that story to tell you this one.

Even though the April Fool's joke was well-received, the minister let it be known in no uncertain terms that his car was hands-off for any shenanigans. I'm certain that once he saw what this crew was capable of, he suspected that the natural escalation of practical joking would involve is car instead of his parking space. So, naturally, with that proclamation, I set down to find some way of involving his car in the next April Fool's prank. After months of discussion and weeks of planning, I stole his car.

Before you send law enforcement after me (I'm sure the statute of limitations has expired on this even if it really was a crime), let me explain that the planning and execution of the theft was the result of a four-person conspiracy. Technically, I stole the car, as I'm the one who got in it and drove it away, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

To make himself more accessible as a minister and shepherd, our minister would often host movie nights at his apartment on Thursday nights. For a while, this because almost a weekly event, but in the spring of his second year of service, he cut back on this activity some. Even though he was single when he arrived at the post, midway through his second year, he was in a dating relationship that eventually led to a wedding, and he and his girlfriend were spending more and more time together, so the campus crew was invited to his place less and less.

In January of that year, four of us got together (the conspirators shall remain nameless) and met regularly to discuss the practical joke that would be pulled on our minister, among other, more important things. We struggled for a long time on who to include, how to pull it off, and most importantly, what to do. I can't recall exactly what sparked the idea, but we decided to steal the minister's car and came up with the details of how to do it about mid-February. The rest of the time leading up to April 1 was devoted to planning and executing the theft.

The best part of this story is that the hardest task we faced was figuring out how to get access to the minister's keys and car. We struggled for weeks trying to come up with a reason to be anywhere near the car and him so we could get access to the keys. As it turns out, our minister played right into our hand by deciding, on his own, to host another movie-watching party at his apartment on Thursday night, March 31. Oh, this was so easy.

Here's how it went down: Right before going to the movie party, my girlfriend and I faked having a fight, and I showed up alone to the party. While there, I teamed up with the minister's girlfriend, and she handed me the car key off his key ring. Then my girlfriend called the minister's apartment, asking to speak to me. We pretended to make up, and I announced to the entire gathering that I was leaving to go pick her up. What I really did was to pick her up and then head to make a duplicate car key. When we arrived back at the party, we weren't really missed, so no one noticed that it took longer to pick her up than it should have.

Then came the next challenge - turning off his car's alarm system. There was no way we could abscond with the alarm remote, so I stepped out onto the porch of his apartment unit with his girlfriend so she and I could talk about the fight I'd had with my girlfriend. What we were really doing was turning off the car alarm and turning it back on to see how the lights displayed inside. We couldn't tell for sure, other than the pattern of flashes his running lights made when the alarm was set or disabled, so we turned it off, and I just hoped that he wouldn't come out later to get something from the car and turn the alarm back on. My girlfriend and I left later that evening, and I went to get a good night's sleep before the next day's hijinx.

I got up early the next morning and went to work as usual. But I left about 9am to head back to my house. I lived less than a quarter mile from the minister's apartment, so I parked my car in my driveway and walked to his apartment. Very gingerly, I opened the door, preparing to run if the alarm sounded. It didn't. So I started his car, drove it to my house, and parked it in my garage. Then I drove my car back to his apartment, parked it in his assigned apartment parking space, then pulled the Ministry Center reserved parking sign from the back of my car and leaned it next to my car in plain view of his apartment window.

The remainder of the story is anecdotal, as I didn't witness all of these events myself, but here is how the next events unfolded chronologically:
The minister got up earlier than normal that Friday morning and went out on his porch to get his morning paper. He looked around his apartment complex, but apparently saw nothing out of the ordinary, so he went back inside. This purportedly happened while I was parking his car in my garage. Then, about an hour later, he stepped out of his apartment again, this time to go get his mail. This time, he noticed that his car was not parked in his assigned space, but another car was. Without going to look at the unexpected car, he went back inside. About 30 minutes later, he called his assistance at the Ministry Center and asked her if his car was still parked up there. He told her he couldn't remember if his girlfriend had driven him home the previous night or not. His assistant sounded a little surprised, but told him that she didn't think his car was there. He then asked her to go outside and check to make sure. Fortunately, she was in on the prank, so she put the phone down for a moment then came back and told him that his car was not parked in the lot, and that she had checked with other students to see if they had seen his car since last night. While this surprised the minister, he still waited another half hour before going out to check on the car. By this time, an associate had come to the complex to pick me up, then we went and gathered several others who were in on the prank and headed back to the complex to witness the fun first-hand. I wanted to get into position across the parking lot from his apartment door, so I skirted around the back side of the building since we had parked there to avoid being seen when he left the apartment. As I was making my way around the building, the minister left his apartment and went to the apartment management office. He told them that he thought his car had been stolen, because it wasn't in the parking lot, and another car was in his assigned space. The person on duty asked him what his apartment number and parking space number were, and when he told her, she looked a little puzzled, then said, "Perhaps it has something to do with this?" At which point, she pulled out the reserved parking sign from the ministry center and set it on the counter. He looked really confused, at which point the management representative said, "Is this some sort of prank? Today is April Fool's..."

The minister stormed out of the management office and started yelling for us, so those of us who were there came out of our hiding places and had a good laugh.