Today my USAF peeps had a dress blues inspection. One of the men showed up in really long shoes because his foot is super wide so the shoes did not come in his size. He reminded me of a true story my dad told me when I was growing up.

Dad had become either the foreman or the head electrician of his overnight shift at General Motors. On his team was a shy man who didn't interact a lot with the others. He had huge feet. The men joked about his "boats" to his face and behind his back.

One day one of the men found a pair of hideous huge white shoes in a thrift store for a dollar and wrapped them up as a prank, to present them to the man with the big feet.

Only . . . When he opened them, the man cried. He said no friends had ever given him a present before. He put the shoes right on. The next night he came with a cake his wife had baked as a thank you.

That story not only stopped my dad from playing pranks on vulnerable people; it stopped me, too.

I still cry when I think of how that man's innocence caused the prank to backfire.