You guys want to hear a story?

When I was in carpenters college there where this kid, I say he was a kid although he was 18. But he was basically freshly 18, the poor kid was a little down on his luck, after finding out his girlfriend was expecting a child on his first day of school and he was really, really not prepared. I took the kid under my wing a little, although his love for pokemon brought a lot of unwanted attention from all the other students, who weren't the nicest of people. Anyways, the kid was gullible, really gullible. And one day when we were working on a project which was just everyone building their own little house. His was alongside of me in the shop and he was just after getting his forth wall up and was just checking a few measurements before moving onto the next task. So I look over at him, and for no reason at all besides a little bit of boredom on a tuesday morning asked him if he had used the stud stretcher to make his wall a extra half inch higher. (For those of you who don't know, this does exist. The very idea actually suggests that there is a tool to make pieces of two by four longer. It's actually the oldest trick in a carpenters joke book alongside the skyhook.) Anyway, before I had time to correct him with a chuckle he ran across the shop towards our instructors office, which was guarded with a great big glass window so he can keep a eye on us and we could wave him over if we had questions. So as I was standing on top of a 12 foot ladder I had a birds eye view of him asking the instructor for the stud stretcher, the only problem was I was much too far away to actually hear the conversation. So I stood there watching to see the result, as this joke has gone much further than I had anticipated. All I could see was the instructor shaking his head in disgust or disapproval, and pointed him towards the door. I expected it to just be a firm "did you really fall for that? Get back to your work and stop fooling around." But then the kid started to run across the shop again, this time heading towards the exit. At this point, I had to figure out what was going on and try to put a end to this, as it was getting to the point of not being funny anymore. I call out his name and ask him where he was going, he looked over his shoulder, still running and yelled "I gotta run out to grab the stud stretcher." and left the shop. A minute or two passed as I was trying to piece together what had just happened, and reached to the only possible conclusion of the instructor must have told him to go find it, and was getting a kick out of how far the joke has gone himself. Suddenly I hear my own name being called, and look over to see my instructor waving me from the glass window in his office. I promptly climb back down the ladder and head over, expecting a bit of a lecture for playing a cruel joke. So I walk in and close the door suddenly and ask what was up. My instructor spins around in his chair and called me out on getting him with the ol stud stretcher joke and I admit my fault without hesitating. He begins to laugh, the type of laughter where he literally leans over the chair and pointing at me with a sparkle in his eye. He tells me how there's always one guy like me on every sight. And as long as no one gets hurt and the work is done, people are going to like having me around to make the day go fast and provide a laugh, which helps a crews morale. I was little shocked, it was like I was being praised for pulling a joke on a guy I knew was gullible and who looked up to me. Before I made my way back to my little house, my instructor calls out to me and asks if I can try and get him with the sky hook next week. It wasn't long after I got back to work when I saw the kid waltz back into the shop shaking his head. Luckily, he was corrected by the shop foremen down in the tool crib, and they both had a good laugh at how far the joke has gotten. One thing I learned about the kid that day was he had a great sense of humor, and was more than happy to be involved with a joke and took no offense to being the butt of the joke. We had a good laugh, and made reference to the stud stretcher for the rest of the program. It was really a best case over all.

If you're curious, the kid had a kid a few weeks before we finished the course, I was the only person to go see him in the hospital and brought a little stuffed toy for the baby. We keep in touch to this day, he's the only one from that class I talk to regularly. He might have been the gullible kid then, but he's a hard working father now who is doing really well for himself, and at the end of the day, I'm rooting for the guy. But I'd pull a little joke like that on him at any given chance.