Preppin’ a prank

Celebrities like George Clooney and Brad Pitt love to regale us with stories of the pranks they play on their fellow actors when they’re making movies.  Let me tell you —

They’ve got nuthin’ on me.

I played a prank on one of my best friends this past weekend that was 30 years in the making.

But let me back up a bit…

It all began when she pranked me only a couple of weeks after we met in college.  I was in her dorm room, waiting for her to get ready for dinner and noticed a framed photograph on her shelf —
Caroline with her arms draped around the neck of John James, one of the stars of the then hit drama Dynasty.

When I asked how the pic came to be, she confided that the two were dating, but she was keeping it quiet at his request.

Of course I didn’t believe her at first, but then she started producing a lot of convincing evidence:  her father’s pageant and production credits, connections through musical theatre friends and a well-timed phone call from John James.

I spoke to the man myself.

Begrudgingly I had to concede — the two were a couple.  He called on two other occasions when I was in her room and said hello.  But during our last conversation, ‘John’ confessed that he was really Caroline’s brother.

Why did she do it?  Especially to a friend that she barely knew?  Because she could?  Evil.

It is now a thing of legends, a story that we rehash often, laughing at her nerve and my naive acceptance.  But this past weekend, I turned the tables.  Now the story has a very different ending.

The satisfying conclusion, here — tomorrow…