"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor"
--- Charles Dickens (English writer and Social critic; 1812 - 1870)
When all is said and done, missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are just regular people like anyone else. They have the same assortment of emotions, interests and disinterests, ambitions, and personalities as anybody else. Additionally, they're just as different from one another, probably even more so than most people would assume. And when you're paired up with someone for every hour of the day, you really get to know that person and it becomes much less like a coworker relationship and much more like a buddy you'd go hang out with on the weekend if you could. The kind of relationship you get to develop after investing hundreds of hours in a person and going through so many experiences both good and bad together is a very intimate relationship. In most cases, I dare say that there are times when you become so familiar and comfortable with someone that it's inevitable that your inner child will come out sooner or later.
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JOY IN THE JOURNEY
A large part of what made my short time in Valle Hermoso so enjoyable were the small things. Like I said before, when you’re a missionary and when you’re removed from entertainment like most videos, music, social media, or games and have next to no downtime for leisure, you find ways to amuse yourself. There was a route near our apartment that Elder Torres and I would take most days. Just around the corner from where we lived was a downed power line that lay lifeless on the dirt ground (which I think was the cause of a brief power outage on the torrential day of "Ministering of Angels"). I’m sure it wasn’t live, or if it was, the rubber insulation prevented anyone from ever getting hurt. But every time we would walk past that power line which was there in the dirt for the whole time I lived there, I would always pretend that it shocked me. I’d let out a loud buzzing sound and jump and convulse a bit and each time Elder Torres would jump nervously and shake his head a little at me like I was an idiot. Then we’d both laugh it off, me a little more than him, and keep walking. It didn’t matter how many times I did that, I’d get him every time! I’m sure he expected it every time when we walked by it but he still jumped every time! Maybe it was just to humor me like the way you laugh at a bad dad joke? And then there were times when the Zone Leaders occasionally went to work with the Elders in distant San Fernando (See "Mission Administration"). San Fernando, that taboo city, was about sixty miles south of us and required a lengthy bus ride to reach. San Fernando was off-limit to anyone besides Hispanics because it was too dangerous for anyone who looked like they didn’t belong there. Whenever the Zone Leaders went to San Fernando, they’d leave early in the morning, spend the night there, and return early in order to have as much time to work as possible in both Areas but they were at the mercy of the bus schedule. That meant that they were gone for at least twenty-four hours at a time, giving the remaining four of us ample time to concoct some harmless prank for their return.
We started in low then it started to grow. At the time of our first friendly prank, the election for governor was going on (which happens every summer). Honestly, it seemed like there were always elections going on in Tamaulipas all year long. The two runnerups were Baltazar Hinojosa for PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and Maki Ortiz (A.K.A. "Cabeza de Vaca" Party). I don't like to get involved in politics but most of the people I knew said that PRI was the more corrupt political party of the two because they always ran and won for the salary, so they say, but I can't say the same isn't true in other instances. As part of Baltazar's campaign, we’d gotten our hands on some political stickers that had been discarded in bulk and plastered the Zone Leaders’ desks with them. Ironically, irrespective of the politics, they liked the look so much that they left them there. If anything, they added gloss and color to otherwise bland white surfaces. It was about as decorative as a Christmas tablecloth.
The next time, we moved their bunk bed into the kitchen (which moderately challenging work) and covered their bed and various parts of the apartment with the same political stickers (Which goes to show just how many we had). We turned off the lights and hid in the bedroom and set up our cameras at different premeditated angles to catch their reactions when they got home in the evening. It would have been perfect too except they called us a few minutes later saying that they forgot their keys, so the whole element of surprise, acting like they beat us home, was ruined. Of course, we helped them move their bed back into the bedroom and clean everything up after the fact.
The time after that, we went all the way! We managed to barely squeak their bunk bed onto the tiny balcony out back. How we managed to make it fit, or even get through the balcony door, I do not know. We weren't sure it would fit. It took a pretty substantial amount of time too positioning all the pieces and assembling them with barely enough wiggle room for us to work around it. But knowing that Elder Sanchez warned us early on that he was allergic, we made sure to keep all his bedsheets and pillows indoors (P.S. I don't know if dirt allergies is a thing, and if it is, I don't know how he managed to leave the house in Tamaulipas for 2 years). But we wanted to play it safe and not aggravate him. On top of that, we moved their study desk into the bathtub keeping everything on it, all the books and pencils and bottles, arranged exactly as it was, and slid the glass shower door closed to add an element of surprise. If you weren’t looking for it, you probably wouldn’t even know it was there. The whole setup was like that for most of the day from morn until dusk. It seemed to work too because it was the last place they looked. They looked in the kitchen, then the bedroom, then the balcony, and then, at last, they found it in the bathroom. Thankfully, it was a much easier thing to clean up than a bed.
The Zone Leaders got home slightly later than expected. For the full "Got You!" moment, we ducked out on the balcony atop the bunk bed mattresses, turned off all the lights in the apartment, and pretended we weren’t home or were asleep (Where else we would be, I don't know but that was the story we invented in our minds). We tried to listen in to see if we could hear them through the door. I remember we were trying to be so quiet that we were holding our breath until we were nearly wheezing out of anticipation of their reaction. Instead, there was silence. Supposing what we'd done and where we were, they played the reverse Uno card and immediately locked us out on the balcony before they even had the chance to see the result of all our strenuous work. Truth be told, I went from childishly giddy to angry so quickly. Okay, I get that they were just pranking us back, but it went on too long. I was just about to jump off the balcony to get back into the house I was so tired as it was that sitting in that cramped space in the heat was pushing my limits. We were trapped there for maybe five minutes before they finally unlocked the door and let us in out of the heat back into the air-conditioned apartment. That was the end of the Zone Leader pranks whilst I was there. Partly because I wasn’t there for too much longer but also probably because we had no way of escalating it beyond what we already had.
I know for a fact that we weren’t the only ones having some harmless fun with each other. I had a friend who got pranked by his Zone Leaders. They told him he was being transferred to a different city and then got him to completely pack all his things back into his suitcases before revealing that he wasn't actually going anywhere. In return, this Elder put glitter in their shampoo bottle. You can just imagine how annoying that would be to get out of your hair. There are many other instances that vary missionary to missionary, some of which I don't feel inclined to share publicly because I don't see any reason to. But in any case, so long as no rules were broken nor harm done, it was all in good fun. Missionaries are just normal people, like anyone else, and they're generally pretty young too. What else would you expect?
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