April Fool's Day!

The problem with April Fool’s Day is that everyone is on high alert for pranks. It’s hard to catch someone off guard and the prank has to have some realistic basis to get them to fall for it. I tried to find out how such a tradition got started, but there is nothing conclusive. Apparently, it is celebrated worldwide and started centuries ago. However, the problem is that you can’t trust any theories about the origins of April Fool’s Day because they can also be pranks.

When I was a kid I enjoyed the “holiday,” and I liked to play pranks on my mother. She was a great victim because of her outrageous reaction. At the same time, I had to be careful not to piss her off too much because I lived at home and she could make my life a living hell. The one prank that always worked was screaming “Roach.” We would be having normal conversation and I would then go into the bathroom and let out a loud scream. She would come running in as I was saying, “there’s a roach!” She start yelling “Where is it?” I would point to any random spot and she would start looking, spray can in hand. After a few seconds I would yell, “April Fool’s” and have a nice chuckle over it while the steam poured out of her ears. “I can’t believe you fall for this every year,” I would say, as I died laughing at her carrying on over it. The rest of my pranks were telling my brother and classmates their shoe was untied. Nine times out of ten, they would fall for that lame line and look down and realize they had been pranked. It was all in good fun.

I already warned my younger daughter, who is a prankster with a straight face, not to bother to prank me today. She likes to pull little pranks all year round just to get me agitated. She loves it when I react, just like I loved watching my mother have a fit over nothing. Sometimes she will make me think she got a bad grade; other times she opens a letter from school and pretends to read bad news; recently she suggested a song to me for my Facebook page that was the worst song ever and then was delighted to read all the negative comments I received! One time, she was responsible for watching a favorite show and reporting what happened to her older sister, who was too busy to watch. She told her one of the supporting characters had died. It wasn’t until days later that her sister learned that the character was live and well. I’ll have to be on guard all day because I know she is cooking something up in her mind. She had that “Cheshire grin” as she left for school this morning.

It’s early in the day so you have lots of time to come up with a sneaky prank to play on your loved ones. I’ll have to give it some thought. Maybe I can fool my daughter before she fools me?


PS I no sooner post this when my daughter calls to inform me she got to school ok, as usual.  Then she tells me it's SNOWING, knowing it would freak me out.  I run to the window and guess what...NO SNOW!  She's in trouble now!