Submitted by jesseberdinka t3_zgyhtd in tifu
Obligatory this happened a while ago.
When my daughter was 6 she was obsessed with the TV show Little House on the Prairie which delight my wife and me who loved the show when we were kids.
In the pilot episode, the family was so poor that each of the girls got a new cup, a shiny new penny, and a potato as a gift for Christmas. My daughter couldn't stop talking about it.
Now my family is really big into taking practical jokes too far. There was the feral daughter kept in a cage prank of 2010 and the Bloody Leprechaun joke of 2013, but this one really backfired on us.
After she went to bed on Christmas Eve, we hid all of her real presents behind the couch and left one package in the middle of the floor. When she came down she seemed surprised that there was only one gift but carefully unwrapped it to reveal, you guessed it, a shiny tin cup, a brand new penny, and a potato.
Attached was a note from Santa:
Molly,
I heard how much you love the Little House show, Here's hoping you have a very PRAIRIE Christmas.
Love,
Santa
She grabbed the potato and started to cry. Uh oh. I really screwed up this time. However, it wasn't because she was upset, but because she was so happy. Even when we revealed her other gifts she only wanted to be with her potato. She drew a face on it and carried it around with her everywhere.
But it started to go bad. First, it turned green and started to sprout eyelets. Eventually, we had a very traumatic experience where the potato disappeared in the night. She's 17 now and still talks wistfully about the potato every Christmas.
TL;DR I once gave a potato to my daughter as a practical joke and ended up backfiring when she ended up loving it and we had to get rid of it before it went gangrene.
Edit: Y'all wanted the Leprechaun story? I just posted it too.