A blast from my practical joking past

Behold, one of my masterpieces. Let me take you back to early 2002, it was my first year back at U of I after my mission. I was in one of the single student wards grousing at all the drama from "As the Institute turns."

Chief drama queen offender: Jay Jacobson. Jay's a good guy, but way too picky for his own good. Jay is the type of guy that could find fault in a girl, even if he custom designed her himself. Since no girl was good enough for him, naturally every single girl in the Institute wanted to date him.....badly.

Well one of my friends was able to get a picture of Jay and we were talking one night trying to think of something devious we could do with it. I activated my devious thought incubator and a couple of days later this sign was born. (If you click on the picture, you'll be able to see a better quality picture, like one you can actually read.)



We made several copies of this sign and posted them all over the Institute on a Friday. We even made a little decorated box where girls could enter their names in the forthcoming date raffle. Now the Institute building is where the singles wards meet for church. So the next Sunday, EVERY single, Mormon girl in Moscow saw these signs.

When Jay finally made it to Church on Sunday he saw the signs and flipped out. However, my devious thought incubator had done some overtime. I was able to post a sign in the Institute office, behind a locked pane of glass. That sign would stay there for 2 weeks.

Well cut to the end story, Jay finally calmed down, we held the date raffle and he actually ended up going on a date, his first in at least a year. Time for me to brag, one of the Bishops at the time was a advertising professor at U of I. He later told me that my sign was the best ad he had ever seen a student do. He tried for a year to get me to switch to advertising.

Anyway, thus began the legend of Steve Bennett's signs. Over the next few years I would make several signs for several events, the best would be the sign that ended Nicolle and my fake engagement prank. More on that one later.