As a child, I was not particularly nice. From about age 8 to about age 16, I thought practical jokes were funny. I was particularly evil on April Fool’s Day. My April Fool’s Day “jokes” included the following:
- On the kitchen sink, taped down the handle of the spray thingie, and aimed it so that when anyone turned on the main faucet they would get sprayed.
- At breakfast time, added blue food coloring to the milk. Just enough so that they didn’t actually notice it until they poured the milk onto their cereal, at which point they suddenly realized everything was light blue. (N.B. I have never put milk on my cereal.)
- Put light coating of Vaseline on the toilet seat of the bathroom used primarily by my older sister. Resulting slipperiness blamed on my younger sister, who was then only two years old, who was assumed to have been playing with diaper rash ointment.
My own memories of my practical jokes fail at this point, mostly because I’d just as soon forget what a jerk I was.
So now it’s true confessions time:– What April Fool’s Day jokes, of which you now repent, have you played on others?
Oh, Dan. You opened the door on this one…I have LOTS of memories of your evil practical jokes. It’s not that you weren’t nice — you were nice — but you had way too much misspent intellectual energy. Here’s my favorite “joke”:
I’m playing in my room, or reading, or something, and I hear this sweet little brother voice calling me from downstairs. “Oh, Jean! Oh, Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeean!”
“Yes?” I say, just as sweetly back. “What is it?”
I really want to say: I can hear an evil scheme whirring in your head even from the second floor, little brother, but I’ll play along, cuz you’re my brother.
“I have a SURPRISE for you!” you say.
Knowing full well I am about to get squirted or slimed or something gross, I very slowly make my way downstairs. You are standing by Dad’s lumpy stuffed chair like a maitre’d at a restaurant, grandly inviting me to sit down.
“Sit down, and I’ll get the SURPRISE,” you say, with a very sweet but not a little evil grin on your face.
I inch closer to the chair. Oh boy. There it is. The “surprise” — the seat of the chair has a couple dozen straight pins (Mom’s you “borrowed”) sticking up through the fabric of the seat cushion. Ha ha ha. I bet you were saying to yourself over and over as you made this SURPRISE….oooh boy I’m making A PIN-CUSHION. And then you would crack up. I’ll just bet.
I chased you around the house then and I’m sure we both got in trouble. April Fool’s indeed!!
And here’s one that you did on some winter or fall evening – the fact that it was NOT on April Fool’s Day made it that much more devious:
After dinner one night, as the family was cleaning up the dishes and such, Dan called to me from the kitchen, “Oh, Aaabby. Would you like some Hawaiian Punch?”
8 or 9 year old me, standing in the dining room, nearly burst out of my skin with excitement. Hawaiian Punch?!?!?! Wowsa!!!! Mom NEVER buys anything good like Hawaiian Punch!!!!!!!
So of course I scampered into the kitchen, and Dan hands me a big glass full of deep red juice. I should have known by the evil grin on his face, but I was a trusting child…and so I took a big gulp of the “Hawaiian Punch.”
BLECH!!!! Ptooey!!!!
There’s nothing worse than a glass of warm BEET juice, especially when you’re expecting cool, sweet, refreshing Hawaiian Punch.
What a brother. (But I still love you, for some reason.)
Whether it was upbringing or my own lack of creativity, but I’ve never played a practical joke on anyone, so far as I can recall. The extent of my April Fool’s activity was telling a temporary fib – or sending a shocking email with a fake story … followed by an “April Fool’s!!!” at the end of it.
Boring.
Ok, I’ll confess: Once, when I was a freshman in college, my roommate and I got up in the middle of the night, saran wrapped all the toilets (so when you peed it went, um, out of the toilet), then taped all the toilet paper rolls so you couldn’t get any paper, we vaselined all the faucet handles, and then we roped everyone shut into their rooms, and finally, we even roped our own room shut and climbed back in through the window as though we too were victims. Heh heh.
We woke to hear people banging on their doors to get out, then someone got out and unroped everyone, and then….ooooo, the fun began in the bathroom. We kept our secret for a long, long time, believe me!
I called a good friend of mine who was a lawyer. A good, decent, kind and considerate lawyer.
When she answered the phone, I put on my best scared serious voice.
“Debbie, I’ve been arrested.”
Her lawyer-voice erupted. “Okay. Did you talk to anyone? Don’t talk to anyone until I get there. Where are you and what’s the charge?”
I couldn’t keep it up, so I confessed the ruse.
Back in my teens, I was always the one designated to make crank phone calls because I could keep from laughing.
In one phone call I pretended to be a wee child, left home alone by my mother. I was calling the phone number she left. It was late; she hadn’t come home yet; I was scared. Through random dialing I got an sweet, elderly woman. I kept insisting that her number was the one my Mommy left for me. I got upset, tearful. Then one of my friends began banging on the door. I told the woman someone was breaking in. The call ended (I hung up) with me screaming.
At the time we thought this our most successful “game”. And this followed a recent success calling women at 3:00am on behalf of the Playtex Company, doing a survey to find out women’s bra sizes.
Later, of course, the guilt cut me. Poor old woman. Hopefully someone told her she had been duped. And hopefully, she shook her fist over it.
Melissa