Neighbor tricked me into celebrating NYE a day early so I’m sneaking alcohol to minors at his party then calling the cops

Yesterday was a shit show. My wife and I woke up at 2pm after a really late night of arguing. As I was making breakfast/lunch for us, I took a glance at our calendar out of curiosity. Shock overtook me: contrary to everything I had come to know over the years, the year ended on December 30th—today—rather than the 31st. There was no December 31st.

My wife and I went into a crazed hysteria trying to prepare our New Years Eve: she defrosted the duck in a bowl of water, I went to go pick up our parents from the retirement center, she drove 40 miles to buy the fireworks, I rented the bouncy castle, she picked up the kids from the day and night care, et cetera, et cetera.

At 10pm we finally had our rest and ate dinner. My dad kept saying “it’s not the new year yet” but he has dementia so we paid him no heed. My boy also kept saying “daddy why are we eating dinner today” but I thought he was just curious, so explained to him that when God made the calendar and handed it down to Mosas on the mountain, he also ordained that we celebrate the ending at the beginning of every year. My kid is pretty ADHD so he didn’t even pay attention to what I was saying and just started to do a Fortnite dance. He didn’t touch the subject again.

Right before midnight, we did a family countdown in the backyard, with the kids going buck wild on the bouncy house. It was a ball of a time. At midnight we shot off our fireworks into the night sky and cheered.

Right at midnight, my neighbor, a fifty year old single rocker type (for context, my wife and I are 26) came out into his backyard in his bathrobe and looked at us with curiosity. He said something along the lines of “celebrating early this year, huh?” and did this trademark smile, mostly a lip smile with teeth exposed only at the extremes. It was his pranking smile. I realized we had gotten got.

You see, my neighbor is a notorious prankster who likes to interfere with the lives of everyone in our village. One year, he even tricked the members of the school board into all resigning. Usually, though, his pranks are more trivial and goofy.

This was the first time he had gotten me. I ran inside to check my calendar and confirmed the prank: there was evidence of white correctional fluid where the 31st square used to be. I can’t believe I didn’t notice. I got mad that my wife and I had been arguing so late the previous night, because if we were more well rested then we probably would have stopped to think.

Then I realized my neighbor’s genius: he was the reason we were arguing in the first place.

Three days ago, the neighbor called me and said he was stranded on the side of the road and asked if I could host his niece for a few hours. She had just arrived from Portugal, he told me, and had a “leg condition” as well as a pollen allergy so she would need to sit inside while she waited for him to come home. I said sure; I wasn’t doing anything anyway. Thirty minutes later, a woman in a bikini shows up and tells me she’s the neighbors niece. Not wanting to be rude, I let her in (I wasn’t sure if in Portugal bikinis were casual streetwear). About an hour later, he picked her up. Then the next day, the neighbor ran into my wife (a staged happening, I’m sure) and told her he had seen a suspicious man walking around the neighborhood the previous day on his Ring camera. He said she should check ours. Sure enough, she saw a bikini clad woman entering our house and me letting her in.

I won’t get into the argument that ensued. That’s between me and my wife. But it was nasty, and somehow this incident had opened some deep wounds that I thought had been sealed for a while.

Anyway, my neighbor had clearly orchestrated a lot of drama and tricks to prank us into celebrating New Year’s Eve a day early. Also, my wife is pissed again because I’m the one who convinced her that there were only 30 days in December. She knows the other neighbors saw us celebrating and launching fireworks and is extremely embarrassed.

I’m going to get my neighbor back, and I’m going to make sure he never pranks us or any one else again. I’ve sent out invitations to all the parents in town for the neighbors New Year’s Eve party, and wrote that food will be provided. That’ll get them in the door, and then my plan will go into action.

Basically, I’m making goody bags for all the kids. Each bag will have candy and a small bottle of “Slurp Juice,” a beverage featured in the game fortnite. I know their undeveloped brains won’t be able to resist drinking it. What it really is, though, is just vodka dyed blue. I’m going to sneak into his house and leave a bunch of these bags on the table out front. Then, 45 minutes into the party I will call the cops on him for serving to minors.

Goodbye, town prankster.