Pranking Palin

I love a good prank, so you can imagine that I was pretty happy when I learned that just before the US election two Canadian radio DJs managed to get Sarah Palin on the phone and convince her that she was speaking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Gold!

Despite the DJs dropping hints that the call wasn’t kosher, Palin played right into their hands, giving me reason to thank the heavens that she’s not in the White House.

The problem with pranks though, is that you can never predict the long-term consequences of your little trick, and these consequences can be long lasting and dire. When I was nine, I convinced my little brother that a crocodile lived in the toilet, and that it would bite off his penis if he ever sat down on the seat. Terrified, my brother refused to sit not just on the toilet in question, but any toilet (I know, I’m a genius).

Unfortunately, it was only when my Mum forced me to prove there was no crocodile by sitting on the toilet that the consequences of my prank truly revealed themselves. For the next nine months, wherever we went, if my little brother needed to go to the toilet, I first had to expose my own genitals to the toilet’s waters to show that there were no penivorous reptiles lurking in the bowl.

Now, I realize that these two pranks are not the exactly the same; Sarah Palin is 21 years and thousands of miles away from the knob-gobbling crocs of suburban Australia and as a result, there is very little chance that a crocodile will bite off her penis.

Maybe this prank will have no lasting consequences at all, but if there’s one thing that I know, it’s that no matter how good the prank, if you’re standing above a toilet, nine months after the fact trying to lure an imaginary crocodile out of the loo with your penis, then the joke’s on you.

- Kent Valentine