99 Red Balloons Go By… A prank well deserved.

On the way back from Thailand, it was time to get down to business and do what we do best as Junior Officers… prank the shit out of the Department Heads.

Here was the setup: We were in the middle of an underway replenishment (where we go along side another vessel to refuel) and during and UNREP tensions are always high because we are coming into such close proximately of another vessel so EVERYBODY and their mother is involved.. except for a few lucky people who escape the watch bill. This being said, I happened to be one of these lucky souls along with another ensign and I went into plan mode straight away. We decided our target would be the XO (The next most important Officer under the Commanding Officer). As soon as they called everyone to their stations we snuck into the galley got the code to his stateroom and took 200 balloons with us so that we could blow them up and fill up his whole room! We set to work straight away and it was starting to look pretty good…

Until…

In the beginning there were just a few balloons..

But with extreme coordination and at a very quick blow rate they started to accumulate

And then we got caught, caught right in the act. We were on about and around balloon 40 when it happened. We heard someone outside punching in the code and there was nothing we could do. We had over 45 balloons on the floor and we were both in the middle of blowing up another balloon when the door swung open. There stood the XO. We stared at him and he stared at us and then he continued walking and said “Sorry about that I just have to use the head (bathroom), carry on.” We didn’t move as if in some small universe we were invisible and he couldn’t see us. He was only there for a few minutes and then he left and we just bust out laughing.

At this point I made an immediate executive decision to surprise everyone and move the balloons to the Operations Officer stateroom. We took a direct route and immediately began the process. I can’t believe it but we didn’t get caught by ANYBODY during the move. Handful by handful we moved the already blown balloons and brought the rest with us.