Yep. We used to prank our parents and they used to prank us. Just harmless stuff and not often.
Things like a rubber snake hanging in the broom closet (my mom was terrified of snakes) or my parents putting those candles that don’t blow out on my birthday cake one year.
There was a lot of laughter in our house(s) when I was growing up.
Same in our family. Pranks weren’t to humiliate or, worse, to injure the “victim”, but rather to try to cause that what’s-going-on moment where the prankee doubts reality, however briefly.
We kids would improve our comedic timing by trying to make a sibling laugh while drinking something. Extra points for milk out the nose.
We kids would prank each other occasionally, but not so often, because things were always taut in our family and there was a lot of fighting, some of it serious, especially between my two oldest brothers, which frightened the rest of us.
I think we pretty much figured it was best to leave everyone else alone.
And the pranks we did do on each other were probably exemplified by my brother who asked me to hold onto the spark plug wire for the lawnmower, and then as I looked at him expectantly, he grinned and pulled the starter cord!
But that was about it.
And either us pranking our parents, or them pranking us, was unheard of.
Pranking my mom would have been like juggling chainsaws-it might elicit a funny response or she might get enraged and come after you with the belt!
And my Dad? He was an extremely serious guy. Any kid in our family was as likely to play a prank on my dad as we were to place the palm of our hand on a glowing red stove element.
That simply wasn’t going to happen in any universe.