HowTo:Annoy Your Parents

Now you, too, can learn to bug your parents at home, in public, and in the car, if you want to have some fun at their expense. This'll drive them nuts!

Step 1: Fail at your chores

• When you do a chore, like washing the dishes, always forget to clean the forks. Or the spoons.
• Always leave your shoes where they're not supposed to be.
• Always forget to do simple chores, like hanging up your backpack or your coat.
• Make your room a mess. If you see your parents cleaning somewhere, immediately make a mess in that room.
• "Forget" every time you're asked to do something simple, like take out the trash, or walk the dog.
• If you have a chore, complain about how it's too hard.
• Say you don't know how to do something. After they explain how to do it, say you forgot.

Step 2: Pester your parents with repetitive habits.

• Click the light switch on and off a lot in the room they are in.
• Walk into the room when they are trying to watch a film and constantly ask questions about everything.
• If you are on a car trip, constantly shout "Are we there yet?"
• If you have siblings, ask who they love more, you or them.
• Follow them around the house and step on the back of their shoes. Apologize. Repeat.
• When they ask you to go get something, come back without anything. When they ask again, come back with something that's not what they ask for. Keep doing this.

Step 3: Try some sabotage.

• Set their alarm clock for 6 'o' clock in the morning on a weekend.
• Sprinkle a little bit of water on their pillow so they think the roof is leaking, or perhaps your pet is peeing on their bed.
• Write your name in the dust all over your parents car.
• Turn the heat down when it's cold, and up when it's hot.
• Make them drive you to school. When you're almost there, say you forgot something super important. When you're almost home, "find" it.
• Ask them for help with your homework. Then when they sit down, get up and leave them to do it.

Step 4: Hide your parents' stuff.

• Hide the TV remote.
• Hide their mobile phone and/or the house phone (if you've got a cordless one).
• Hide their wallets and purses.
• Hide their keys, right as they're about to leave the house.

Step 5: Embarrass your parents in public.

• If you are in a store with them, constantly pick things up and ask how much they are.
• If you're somewhere there are other people, look at a guy next to you and loudly ask your parent why he smells like farts.
• Start begging for candy or junk food at the grocery store: "Can I have this, please?"
• Beg to go to the bathroom. When your parents find a bathroom, say you don't have to go anymore.

Step 6: Say insulting but honest things.

• If they come near to your face and say something, suddenly jerk back and shout "Have you been eating garlic?" or "You look old."
• If your parents have bought some new shoes, turn to look at them and then say "What ARE you wearing?!"
• If your parents are scared of spiders, or dogs, or something tiny, make fun of them whenever they freak out about that thing.

Step 7: Start talking in an annoying way.

• Use bad grammar and don't stop even after your parents correct it.
• Call your parents by their first names, instead of "mom" and "dad."
• Pretend that you are deaf in one ear and constantly yell "What?" or "Talk louder, I can't hear you!"
• Talk in a different accent, or just jabber at them in a made up language.

Step 8: Be loud.

• Turn your music up really loud, especially if they don't like the music.
• If they say a word from a song, suddenly burst out into that song, singing really badly at the top of your lungs.
• Jump up and down the stairs, rather that walking.
• Slam doors.
• Laugh really over the top if someone tells a joke.
• Walk into a room and scream, saying you have seen a ghost.
• Chew with your mouth open and slurp when you drink.

Step 9: Be smart in a dumb way.

• Correct your parents' grammar constantly, but incorrectly. When they say, "Who wants ice cream?", yell back, "Whom wants ice cream, you mean, I believe."
• Try talking really "properly," even if you don't know what you're saying. Pick a really long word, like "philandering" and use it constantly: "Well, frankly darling, this philandering philistine hasn't got a cotton picking clue."
• Recite random facts when your parents try talking to you, or just make them up: "At school we learned about how the interior crust of the moon is where they get the stuff for cellphone screens. They send kids up there to get it."
• Say vague nonsense. If they ask what you did at a friend's house, say, "It was....totalitarian."

Step 10: Be weird.

• If they are walking to the bathroom, run in and lock the door and tell them you were desperate.
• Talk to 10 imaginary friends, all at once.
• Just start summarizing the plot of Star Wars, or telling your parents about your skeleton key to the underworld in super-specific and dramatic detail.
• Wait until you have the house to yourself and move around all the furniture, stacking it in weird places.
• Put on all your clothes backwards.

Tips!

• Be consistent with these until your parents get fed up with you.
• Record your voice saying something random, sit next to them and play it over and over again.
• Try doing little steps at a time, in order from very annoying to a little bit annoying. (or vice versa)
• Your parents might get really mad at you, so don't do this often.
• When they say "turn that down", turn it up even louder.
• Talk in an annoying voice over and over.
• Ask "why" after every answer your parents have given you if you have asked a question about something.
• Talk very quietly, so they can't hear you, but just enough so it sounds like you're talking. Then tell them they have hearing problems, in a loud voice.
• Make a farm animal noise when they say your name.
• When they call you say, 'In a minute' and then don't come.
• Don't talk, just waste lots and lots of paper by writing notes.
• Pretend you don't understand them and for example, when they ask you to take out the trash, say something random like: "Yeah let's go to Walmart, good idea!" Instead of replying properly.
• If the house is messy and your parent(s) will most likely ask you to clean up, wear headphones all day and pretend not to hear them telling you to clean up.
• Throw away your homework and say you were daydreaming over and over even if they say they know you're lying.
• Flat out sing in the bathroom, shower, or some random place and then give them a funny look when they tell you to stop.
• Suddenly start speaking a language they don't know. If you don't want to learn a new one, just learn a few phrases.