I've seen a lot of pranks in my day. A lot of pranks. You'd think that would be really funny, but unfortunately, I've seen the vast majority of them from the perspective of the person being pranked. Usually, these pranks involved my car. See, my friends who were girls thought it was always really funny to make me live in a world of fear and uncertainty, not knowing when the next attack would come. It was a lot like being stalked and tortured, except the police laugh at you.

It all started the fall of my senior year of college. I walked outside one cold November morning to find my car wrapped entirely in cling wrap. Well, I thought to myself, I don't recall wanting to keep my car from spoiling overnight. I quickly pulled the wrap off (it was put on in only one direction, so it was possible to just tug on it to take it off), and told all of my friends later that day how easy it was to pull it off. Because I'm a moron.

The attacks continued on multiple occasions. I was hit once while doing charity work in a Barnes and Noble's. Another evening. Here and there, I would be struck, and scream into the cold and indifferent night, "WHO ARE YOU, WRAPPER FIENDS?!" No one was above suspicion, but I never truly thought it was my female friends.

Until that one night.

My good friend Mario, one of the many whom I suspected behind the WrapAttacks, ran into my room one night. "JOEL! The wrapper people are at your car outside right now!" I raced down the stairs and peered out the window. Sure enough, there were a few ominous figures, their cling wrap gleaming in the moonlight, standing around my car and giggling menacingly. I busted out the door and ran toward the car. Two of them darted into the dark cover of the forest. The third, thinking quickly, screamed very loudly and ran haphazardly into the middle of the road. I decided that this third perpetrator might be a little less capable of a clever escape and chased after her. Following a grueling twelve second pursuit, I picked her up and carried her back to the front yard. "KERRY!" I exclaimed, seeing her face. "YOU?!"

After a few moments, the other two criminals reluctantly came out of the woods. Kristen, who even now reads this post, and Amanda, a small little thing with the mischievous soul of an intoxicated demon. I invited them in and asked them about how and why they chose to do such a thing to me. It was funny. ...oh. Any other reason? Mmmmmmmmnope. It was just pretty funny.

Now typically, you'd stop pulling the pranks once the victim found out it was you. Not so much here. No, they kept on going. In fact, they upgraded their project to include a lovely covering of my car in post-it notes. That genuinely aggravated me, but I have to admit that looking back, that was some dedication to the craft. It probably took a minimum of thirty minutes to get them all on the car.

They also came together for one last job a year ago, when I lived a good half hour away from the college. Yes, much like Oceans series, it will keep going on once every few years until one of them dies. My roommate at the time, Jer, woke me up. "Joel, someone's messing with your car!" My first thought, CRIMINALS! My second thought, OH... MAYBE PROBABLY GIRLS.

My plan was to sneak outside and attack them from behind. Jer decided it would be sneakier to turn on the back porch light before running out. Somehow, they brilliantly deduced that they were found out when the lights came on, and made a run for it. One of them got injured running away. Another dropped her cell phone, which was confiscated without remorse. They eventually all made it to their getaway car down the street and took off with me in hot pursuit on foot. I returned to my car to discover the horrors of their minds.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Yeah. Like as in, peanut butter. And jelly. And bread. Covering my car. Well this... this pissed me off. Enough so that when they came back, expecting me to return the cell phone, they had to tackle me and dig through my pockets for a while to find the phone. Looking back, that actually kind of made up for the peanut butter on the car.

Have any of you ever tried to GET peanut butter off of a soft top hood, let alone a car? I'm going to guess that unless you've laid out a picnic lunch on your vehicle, you have not. It's not easy. There were still smacks of lunch food on my hood the next day when I drove to work.

In the end, a couple trips through the local car wash did the trick. I was still mad, and would be again if it ever happened another time. But on the other hand, it did give me something to write about here. There were dramatic repercussions of that night's events, but that's a story for another time.