Whether you had a younger sibling or you were a younger sibling (or both) chances are you've pulled or been the victim of a cruel prank or two in your time. We know we certainly have...
As horrifying as it is to imagine any of these truly treacherous plans being hatched on your own children (and by your own children) some day, we must admit that recalling them gave us a proper giggle.
Personally, I always took every available opportunity to petrify and torment my younger sister Erica, who is six years younger than me. Some of my best work included convincing her that the race to finish the washing up (with me washing and her drying) was a fair one. Obviously I always won.
Later on, when a local lady would come door-to-door collecting second-hand clothes and canned goods in a big battered pram, I would run and find Erica and tell her to pack her suitcase: her real mother was at the door to collect her and take her back to her caravan in the woods. Our Mum could never understand why my sister would vanish in complete horror whenever she spotted the big pram trundling down the road. I laughed and laughed.
In time we teamed up and focused our efforts on scaring the bejesus out of our younger brother. I had taught her well. In just a few industrious months, we hid and jumped out of every cupboard, wardrobe, from behind every door and from under every bed in the house until he was afraid to leave the room if one of us wasn't in plain sight.
If you and your siblings got on like Anne and Barry and your childhood was filled with Von Trapp family choruses, stop reading now. The HerFamily team is about to reveal our cruelest sibling pranks... and not all of us were the pranksters.
Sive O'Brien, Editor, HerFamily
"I'm the youngest of four so, as the littlest; it was me who was used as bait for pranks. We had a ball hanging out together, but some of the high jinx are pretty memorable: My two older brothers used to love sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag. Pretty harmless you might think. Until they put their little sister in the bottom of the bag and sat side-by-side 'driving' it to the bottom of the stairs. Repeatedly. I thought it was as funny as they found it, regardless of the fact that I must have been black and blue. And then there's the times they used to draw on my face with biro while I slept. Oh yes. I'd wake up to find moustaches and hearts illustrated all over my face, and I'd frantically try and scrub them off in time for school. But the worst has to be when we went on a family holiday to stay in an old castle. I was all of nine-years-old. The siblings told me it was haunted, that they could see ghosts at night. Little did they know I didn't sleep a wink for the entire holiday – I was fear-stricken from the minute the lights went out every night."
Sophie White, Journalist
"I'm an only child so you'd think I'd have escaped the sibling pranks. Not so. My cousin is five years older than me and frequently told me that the reason I had no siblings was because after they'd had me my parents didn't want "to risk having another child". She also regularly told me that my arrival had RUINED her life – she was ten, I was five. Despite this, I was totally devoted to her and would obey her commands without question. Suggestions like "Let's cut your hair" or "Let's swim in the pond" were always met with total compliance by my gormless childhood self. Occasionally I would try to back out at the last minute but Nancy was always armed with The Fork usually carried partially concealed in her sleeve. At the slightest sign of insubordination on my part, she would dig the fork into my back and in a low, calm voice tell me "resistance is futile". She was crafty though and would often change tack when I'd least expect it. I'd go to her house and she, pretending to be my best friend, would offer to do me up like Madonna. Then instead of the Material Girl she'd do me up like a zombie, complete with gruesome bruises, sores and boils."
Lauren Tracey, Journalist
"I ruled with fear when I was a little one. Every time I did something wrong, I would give out with such fury to my little brother Sean, that I'd convince him it was HIS fault. Eventually, he'd automatically apologise for my mistakes. It took him years to break the habit. Yes folks, I was a mini-Stalin."
Sound familiar? Tag a sibling who was the bane of your life in the Facebook comments.
