The weather seems to have pulled an April Fools' prank on us and reverted to early spring, after convincing us that summer had already arrived. I just hope my seedlings survive.
We had our monthly church potluck, er, fellowship dinner, on April Fools' day this year. Naturally this required special preparations. I made up two big pans of meatloaf in muffin papers and frosted them with garishly-colored mashed potatoes. This was heartily disappointing to the preschoolers, who had finished all their noodle casserole so they could have a cupcake, but highly amusing to everyone else. I think I really did initially fool everyone except the ladies who caught me microwaving them before the meal.
As for our own ducklings, D1 thought the "cupcakes" were the greatest thing ever. She will be disappointed if she ever has a real cupcake. D2 loved the meat but was skeptical of the food coloring in the potatoes.
DOB has this idea of a sort of reciprocal prank dinner, where the main dish would be meatloaf disguised as cupcakes and dessert would be cupcakes disguised as meatloaf.
The quality of an April Fools' day prank reflects several factors: amusement, of course, but also how uniquely suited it is to the recipient, lack of any serious harm, and as far as I am concerned, ease of setup. The best prank is one that takes only a few minutes to do and has everyone--or at least me--laughing all day.
With that in mind, two of my all-time favorites date from when I worked in an office. One was sneaking on to my boss's computer when he was out of the office and modifying the "Autoreplace" feature in Word so that when he typed certain frequently-used phrases they would be replaced with apropos substitutes. (His name, for instance, would be replaced with his office nickname, "The Machiavellian Mind," and our chief opponents would become "The Evil Empire.")
Another one came after our landlords had spent most of the month of March working on the plumbing in our bathroom. They had not warned us in advance of this project--we just came into work one morning and found the toilet in the kitchen. Since we had only that one toilet for twelve people, the situation was desperate and we all ate lunch out a lot that month. It had finally been repaired just a day or two before April first.
So I got in early and put an "Out of Order" sign on the door.
Read about more April Fools' jokes at Life in a Shoe.
4 comments:
Food coloring seems to be at the base of a lot of the best pranks. Mental note: buy plenty next March for last-minute ideas.
I love the autoreplace prank - I've got to file these away for next year. Or maybe sooner...
Well, no lines for the bathroom!
I have searched in vain over the past three years to find an error in our pastor's comments. I was taught to always correct errors in theology and composition.
However, I was not really searching for errors in your writings because it seemed to be a waste of time. Even so, I chanced upon a spelling slip, and of all things, it is on the blog twice. Ask me if you get desperate. -Grandma
You got me. That's my spelling Achilles' heel. I fixed it in this post, but I don't think I'll search through the entire remainder of the blog to find out where the other one is.
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