Dan's perhaps most common and these days least
successful joke is to send fake e-mails to me and write fake comments
to the mickelsson.net website allegedly from various fictitious women
with a special interest in me. I suspect no frequent reader of this
website can have avoided seeing these infantile comments from Dan, which
must surely be the signs of some kind of aberration.
Dan often victimizes me with more sophisticated jokes as well. Once for
instance, I was going to a barbecue party on roller skis, because some
people wanted me to give a skiing demonstration, and Dan had agreed to
bring a bag of mine with proper dry clothes along for me. When I opened
the bag at the party with the intention to change to proper clean
clothes, I found to my great astonishment not my own clothes but some
disgusting lump. Dan had replaced my clothes with the worst lump he
could possibly find. The evening was chilly, so I had no choice but to
wear Dan's lump. Needless to say, Dan and the other party guests had a
good laugh at my expense.
Another time, I was going to the United States, where I was to attend a
conference for a week. Since I was leaving on a very early flight and
was already excessively sleep-deprived, I slept the night before
departure in Dan's house in central Oxford in order to save some time in
the morning. Upon arrival in San Diego, California, half a world away, I
discovered that all my underpants had been removed from my luggage.
There was no doubt in my mind about who the perpetrator was. Nobody else
than Dan would do such a silly thing as to steal somebody's underpants.
With hindsight, I can say that I should not have entered his house
without locking my suitcase very carefully and keeping a close eye on it
at all times. Initially, I tried to search for a shop selling men's
underwear, but I was staying far away from the shopping districts of
downtown San Diego, my schedule was busy and jetlagged as I was, I
suffered from an acute lack of sleep and had other priorities than
trying to find an underpants shop. In the end, I reluctantly gave up the
thought and hope of buying a fresh set of underpants and used the
single pair I was wearing at departure for the entire week. Every now
and then, especially after my frequent sports activities, I tried to
wash this pair in the hotel bathroom sink with hotel bathroom soap and
then blow it dry with a hairdryer. I can assure you that you do not feel
very fresh after wearing the same underpants for a week. The first
thing I did upon my return back to England was to get a fresh pair onto
myself. Dan of course tried to tease me as much as he could and kept
telling people that I had left my underpants in his refrigerator, before
eventually returning them to me.
Now recently, I was travelling with Dan and a few other friends to a
wedding in Wales. I and some of my travel mates were planning to sleep
in tents. I had no tent of my own and relied on the generosity of my
friends. Just to tease me, Dan had brought with him a completely useless
rubbish tent, which he all day long tried to convince me I had to sleep
in, when in reality there was ample room for me in a proper tent. My
sixth sense kept telling me that something big was about to happen.
Hence, I quickly decided to take all reasonable precautions and locked
up my luggage fearing that Dan would steal my collection of underpants.
Afterwards, it actually turned out that he had already done so at that
point. In the evening, we were decorating the leaving vehicle of the
bride and groom and arming it with party poppers and tying up empty
metal cans to it. And so it became time for the newly weds to leave in
the car. Suddenly, Dan shouted: "Look, what is tied up behind the car?" I
could not believe my eyes. Tied up to a string behind the automobile
carrying the bride and the groom were a few pairs of my underpants,
which were now being dragged along behind the vehicle, as it accelerated
away. Intuitively, I started running after the car in front of 150 or
so wedding guests in a futile attempt to rescue my underpants. Needless
to say, this was in vain. Dan, who had perpetrated this despicable act,
and the rest of the crowd of course had a good laugh. In the end, I did
get my badly thorn underpants back, but some pairs were damaged beyond
repair. As you can see, Dan has an abnormal fascination for men's
underpants, which can cause ordinary decent people a lot of mischief.
Other people have also fallen victim for Dan's infantile pranks. Before
getting married seven years ago, my idol Stephen Tuck did all he could
to keep the location and hotel he had chosen for his wedding night an
absolute secret and thought he had succeeded in doing so. This was a
false hope. Through some rather impressive detective work, Dan had
managed to figure out where Stephen was planning to head with his bride
after the wedding: to a hotel in Dorchester, rather far away from Bath,
which was the scene of the wedding. And so it happened that when Stephen
and his bride were walking up to the hotel looking forward to enjoying
their first night as newly weds, Dan was already there waiting for them
behind a fence together with some likeminded individuals. As you might
imagine, Dan and his friends did their best to cause mischief to the
poor newly-wed couple. To put this into some kind of perspective, I can
assure you that Dan is about the last person in the world I would want
to see during my honeymoon. (And I fear my idol Stephen is right, when
he bluntly says I might as well invite Dan along, as he will no doubt
turn up anyway.)
Somehow things always seem to strike back against Dan. One time for
instance, when he had lent out his favourite pedal cycle, once bought
for a small fortune, it was reported stolen and replaced by a worthless
totally decrepit bicycle, which caused Dan a great deal of anguish.
Another time somebody launched a prank website making fun of him.
Recently, he also returned from a certain wedding in Wales in a very wet
suit indeed. And when he was getting married a few years ago, people
turned up at his wedding wearing his underpants on top of their suits
and decorating the venue with them, despite the fact that he had very
carefully locked up his entire wardrobe in his guarded office then at
Cambridge University. Needless to say, I am innocent like a saint and
have absolutely nothing to do with any of these events. As everybody
knows, I am a mature person, who would never even consider doing
anything childish in revenge when targeted by Dan's infantile pranks.
I would like hear from the readers whether they think the kind of
behaviour described in this article is at all normal. Do girls ever do
this kind of things to each other? I want to finish by saying that,
despite his questionable sense of humour, Dan is also an absolutely
great friend, who has helped me with a lot of things over the years.
