KEY POINTS:
Sadistic prankster, lucky not to be fired: "This is probably the worst prank I've been involved in," says Colin from Devonport. "It happened in Sweden, when I was at school and did two weeks at the local telco. I was put with the techies who maintained the network,
and they were an insane bunch. But the head of department was a very correct, wiry little man who had an irritating habit of rushing everywhere. He'd come banging through the door, shout "Gooood mooorrrrniiing!!" then dash towards his desk and throw himself into his chair in one fast, noisy and annoying move. We had a think about how to end this. We decided to use some thin but strong steel wire to anchor the chair in one place. Next day, boss comes flying in through the door as usual, aims for the desk and throws himself towards it but ... the chair doesn't move, so boss continues underneath desk, bangs his head against it and knocks himself unconscious. Nobody got fired for that but it was kind of awkward for a while."
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Historical prank: "Sixty years ago, when I worked on farms north of Auckland, we had a custom called 'tin canning'," says a reader. "This was a surprise house-warming party for newly married couples. Friends and relatives would get together and unannounced descend on the couple in the evening and take over the house. Pranks were often played on the hapless couple. One night two of the groom's brothers and I took their farm truck to a nearby pine plantation and cut down three 10m pine trees, dragged them to the house, dug three holes across the driveway and planted the trees. The next morning when the new husband headed off for work, he found the way blocked and had to get an axe and cut the trees down."
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Jan says a child crying in public is not always the result of discipline: "At the fire sale at the Milford Warehouse, a poor little thing was sobbing uncontrollably in a corner. While the rest of us queued for our fire sale bargains, we commented on the child being in 'time out'. We had been in the line for some time when a kindly soul came along and asked the sobbing child if she was all right? 'I want my mum', she cried. She was lost. You can imagine how we felt."
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If you thought the local real estate agent who wants to name his progeny 4Real was daft, get a load of Doris and Daniel Neeway who named their bouncing baby boy Georgebush Neeway (yes, Georgebush is his first name), or the parents of Urhines, which is pronounced "Your Highness" or the recreational drug users who named their special bundle Special K in reference to the drug Ketamine. (Source: neatorama.com)