Pranks need to be planned out. They are not spontaneous things.

People who do pranks without thinking them through end up with stories like these 16 from AskReddit, which are great for us, but mostly pretty awful for them.

1. Loads

My brother and I discovered a joke shop on a day trip. My mother was a smoker and we found those explosive cigarette firecrackers. We both bought them knowing how hilarious they would be, but we only had the one person to prank.

So she is driving along and the first one explodes, and she freaks out. Wasn’t as funny as we thought. Later on another one explodes and she has a minor melt down. She flips out on both of us, we don’t dare say a word, but we know that there is probably one more exploding cigarette in the pack. Our dread was probably worse than hers.

About 50 miles from home, the last cigarette explodes. If she yelled at us, it might have been better. Instead, she relit it and kept driving, with tears going down her face. That next hour was excruciating as mom drove and cried.

2. Chip

When I was around 12, we had a big old fat dog named Chip who did nothing but sleep and eat. So one day when my mom was grocery shopping, the dog was laying in the kitchen so i squirted ketchup on him and on the floor and everything. When my mom came home into the kitchen I pretended to cry and said “Mom! chip went crazy I had to kill him!”. She legitimately started bawling and and dropped the grocery bag breaking stuff and got on the floor, only to see chip roll over and walk outside. She was pissed and chip dragged ketchup everywhere.

3. Prank-vert

So when I was about 14 I was going to prank my sister in the bathroom by hiding in the cupboard under the sink (it was large) and make scary noises while she was in the shower. Obviously not well thought out, but I was bored.

I knew she was showering soon so I got under there and shut the doors and waited. To my horror, my mom came in and took a long piss, and then opened the cupboard doors for some reason and found me curled up in the cabinet. I exited hastily with a burning red face and later my dad chewed me out for trying to spy on my sister in the shower. I still feel the horror many many years later.

4. Mom’s Prank as Punishment

When I was in high school I borrowed (without permission) my dad’s car while he was away on business to drive to school. My mom found out and used the second set of keys to take the car back home.

When I came out to find the car gone I started to panic and called my mom confessing everything and saying that the car must have been stolen. Trying to teach me a lesson, she agreed and said I should just go home and wait for her.

I was so devastated thinking that I had ruined my family financially and that my sisters wouldn’t be able to go to college because my family would be broke from something I did (no, I didn’t think about insurance, I was panicking) I ended up going home and taking every pill I could get my hands on trying to kill myself, it was mostly sleeping pills and Tylenol with codeine.

Fortunately when I called my mom to tell her how sorry I was and that she wouldn’t have to worry about me doing something like that any more she figured out what was happening and called the ambulance.

The paramedics arrived just as I passed out and they were able to get me to the hospital and save my life.

It took years before my dad forgave my mother for that prank.

5. Nuts

When I was a little kid, I thought for some reason it would be hilarious to sneak under the table at dinner time and punch my dad straight in the nuts. To this day I vividly remembering grinning and pulling back my fist and letting go with all the velocity of a four year old. My dad proceeded to take me around the corner and give me the second worst spanking of my life. I don’t punch people in the balls anymore.

Photo Credit: The Last Man on Earth

6. The Roach

When I was in high school, this guy I was friends with had a very realistic looking cockroach. It was huge and glossy and rubbery. It looked very real. He gave it to me for some reason, so one day while my mother is blow drying her hair in the bathroom(her head upside down) I sneakily placed the roach on her bare foot and stepped back. She FREAKED! She probably jumped up in the air 5 ft. and screamed and cursed. When she saw me laughing, she realized it wasn’t real and proceeded to beat me with the blow dryer. She was so pissed that I don’t even think she intended to really hurt me, but she did. I ended up with a huge lump on my head and a major headache all day. She hates roaches, so I guess I should have seen that coming, but damn, she hit me hard.

Don’t prank your mother…