This year, I drew my mother-in-law’s name to find a Christmas gift… I decided to gather up her marathon medals and put them in a shadow box. The medals were just laying around in a drawer, so we slipped in one day and picked them up and arranged them:
For fun, we decided to prank Jeanne (the mother in law). We found someone getting rid of a clown picture on [Freecycle], which was a perfect front for the shadowbox:
Jeanne had apparently decorated Jennifer’s room with similar clowns when Jennifer was a kid. Jennifer hated those clown prints at the time and thought it would be hilarious to give a little clown back to her mom years later…
With everything in place, it was time for the reveal:
Roy was in on the prank, you can see from this pic that he isn’t going to really be able to help sell the clown:
As soon as Jeanne held her gift up for inspection, brother in law Jorge blurts out a surprised “WHOA!”. He is a little leery of clowns, and he certainly wasn’t expecting one on Christmas morning. Sister in law Paula looked over at me with a “I knew that guy was retarded” expression on her face. Jennifer is behind the camera so her mom can’t seeing her laughing.
While Jeanne is sitting there like she maybe just unwrapped a box of old dog turds but didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, I start riffing on why I picked clowns, going on about how Jennifer told me that Jeanne was a big fan of these clown paintings, so I tracked down an archival quality print. and the frame was extra thick because there was a high tech charcoal filter to protect the print from moisture, etc., etc.
While I’m going on about how this has been such a carefully put together clown print and how Jennifer helped with the idea of a clown print, Jeanne manages to get out something to the effect “Well, um, it is just such a…surprise…because Jennifer hated those clowns so much when she a kid”. Three or four times, sheer disbelief that that print would be of a clown. Jennifer is about to cry for laughing and is close to giving up the ruse so she almost begs her mom to open the case and check out the filter system:
Much better reaction:
