Here’s an oldie but a goodie: (please note, for best recommended results, try at liberal arts institutions known for being fans of theater)
As seniors, my friends and I greeted freshmen students (no one asked us to). One of us held a clip board and pen. One held a tailor’s measuring tape. And one had a sharpie and a small stack of “Hello my name is _______” name tags. Here’s how the prank goes.
1) Cheerfully greet each student as if you’re an official greeting team of some sort. Clip board holder says “Friend, let’s get you a name tag”
2) Measuring tape holder proceeds forward, holding out tape-measures something random about the person (something where you don’t actually need to be up close and personal, like the length of their shin from 2 feet away, or I suppose you could try asking “please may I measure your wrist” or some such). Measuring person calls out a number. Possibly two.
3) Clip board person studiously records the number on a chart. Nods gravely/excitedly/smoothly/suspiciously/enthusiastically/whatever at Name tag person.
4) Name tag person writes down something utterly totally random in the tag blank. Like “peanut butter” or “ aerodynamic jellyfish”. With great ceremony, tag person hands tag to new student. All prankers bow, or offer waves, while saying “Pleased to meet you (name tag name), welcome to college! We hope you have a great year!” And walk away in whatever style suits you best.
Done correctly, this can happen so fast and flawlessly that parents, new students and onlookers will all be awed and confused by the time you’re out of earshot and if they see you later, will simply go “hey, it’s the welcoming committee!” and laugh. And it’s so much fun.
I’m obsessed with the idea of doing this but ONE person just gets named Steve.
If their actual name is literally anything other than Steve, it’ll still be funny and everyone will wonder why this one person got a regular name on their nametag while everyone else is labeled as Jubilation or Injket-1098 or whatever.
If their actual name is really Steve, they will spend the rest of their life wondering how the hell you knew that by measuring the length of their pinkie.
You. You get it. Carry on.
Steve wouldn’t assume it was a guess, and I have a story about something similar.
We used to take kiddo trick or treating in my wifes old neighborhood, it was smaller than where we live now but wife has friends we didn’t get to see often that we’d visit.
Every year there was a guy dressed as a wizard with Eldar Futhark runes on a big walking stick.
Thing about runes is you can pick up 5 different books on them and walk away with 6 different ways to translate them. But they’re all close, if I stare at modern writing in Eldar Futhark runes I can read just about any of them, it just takes a while to get the accent sometimes.
Anyway this guy dressed as a wizard had the name Mark written down the front of the staff in bigger runes than anything else on it. So the first year I see him I stop and go “Hey, Mark, right?” and he confusedly goes “Yeah? Uh, do I know you?” and I just tell him “Nice wizard staff” before walking off.
The next sixish years I’d call out some variation of “Hey Mark!” and duck into the crowd, then I’d hear him yell “How does that guy know me?”
