It Was Dangerous To Have A Birthday

My twentieth birthday was very memorable. I was travelling with a Christian band, named Living Sound, in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe). We had the day off and we were spending it on a beautiful estate with a gorgeous house, rolling lawns and great amenities.

The house had a sauna, so I thought I would try it out. I hadn’t spent more then ten minutes in the sauna when, all of sudden, the room filled with the rest of the guys in the band. They grabbed me, carried me out onto the lawn and while the guys sat on me, one of the girls in the band shaved my right leg.

You have to understand, I have vey hairy legs. Also, it was December and it was the middle of the summer in Africa. I always wear shorts in the summer. Now, here I was with one very hairy leg and one clean shaven leg. That really is not a great ‘look’!

Why, you may ask? You see, it was very dangerous to have a birthday in our band! On our trip down to Africa on a cruise ship, my buddy, Greg, had been grabbed from his bunk bed. Early one morning, when he was fast asleep, eight of us guys surprised him and threw him into the ship’s pool. That was in retaliation for his interfering with us getting his girlfriend on her birthday.

But one of the best stories, it is sort of legendary, was when our fearless leader, Terry Law, had his birthday. You see, Terry was one of the worst for pulling birthday pranks. When his birthday came, he was more than a little wary of what would happen to him!

Terry kept looking over his shoulder the whole day, wondering when ‘it’.. ‘the birthday prank’ would happen. Dinner time came, just before our evening concert, and still nothing had happened. Unbeknownst to Terry, the girls on the team had prepared a special birthday cake for him. They had made a chocolate cake, with one very special piece. The girls had laced Terry’s piece with a couple pieces of Ex-Lax (a very strong laxative) tablets mixed into the icing of his piece.

When they served the birthday cake that evening, Terry got his ‘special’ piece of cake! He had no idea what was happening!

Well, as the story goes, the team had their concert that night and as usual, Terry came up to preach at the end of the evening. As he was preaching his seven point sermon, the Ex-Lax kicked in around the third point! To their chagrin, the team could see his obvious discomfort as he cut his forty minute message to twenty minutes and quickly passed it off to one of the other team members to close.

Apparently, Terry spent the rest of the night very close to the bathroom! As I was saying, it was very dangerous to have your birthday in our band! 🙂

Question: What are your favourite pranks that you have heard about or done yourself?

Comments from Facebook: Judi Omdahl Nordtvedt: Susan frosted one corner of the cake with the Ex-Lax & we marked it a certain way so we would know that Terry got that piece (an extra large one) & no one else would accidentally eat it! There were a couple of other memorable things about that evening…does anyone else remember what those were?

Gordon Calmeyer: I think this was in Paul Paino’s church in Fort Wayne Indiana, I think Terry did not make it through the altar call and either Don Moen or I had to finish the service. Terry spent the whole night in the toilet in the Prophets Chamber in the church where he was staying! Not good but it turned out to be a classic story!

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