I come from a long line of jokesters. Not so much on my dad’s side, but my mom’s side of the family is thick with smart alecks, tricksters, goofballs and what Grandma used to call “turkeys”.

When I was probably ten or so, I was in my room and my mom called to me in a frightened voice from the bathroom. She said there was a squirrel in there and I should bring her something from my room so she could defend herself.

I didn’t bite.

First off, there was no way I was going anywhere near the bathroom if there was a squirrel in there.

Second, she’d messed me with one too many times, so now any claim of something unusual was suspicious.

She used to pop out at us from behind doorways. She’d short-sheet our beds. I’m not sure but I think she swapped out the sugar in the sugar dish (which we rarely got to use so it added to the impact of the joke) with salt.

Beyond pranks, though, my mom is known for being FUNNY.  Funny with an edge sometimes, but funny.

Because of all this, poor Mom was left to handle the fake squirrel on her own, and she had to admit defeat when she came into my room and admitted there was no squirrel. You might think this was the end of her pranks on me, but all this really did was up the ante on the jokes she used in the future, taking the whole thing up a level.

*end backstory*

All of this to say, I recognize that it was gotten pretty heavy around here, and I don’t want you thinking that it’s all gloom and doom all the time. Because it was April Fool’s Day yesterday, I thought I’d list for you the pranks my family pulled. I can’t (and won’t – some of these are so lame I don’t want them to soil my good reputation) take credit for all of these; my kids got really into pranks this year around. *sigh* They’ll learn some good ones eventually.

Here we go:

• Spray water on someone’s bed.
• Put the toothpaste cap on really tight.
• Fall down in the hallway.
• Water down someone’s coffee (or try to and get caught in the attempt).
• Fall down in the kitchen.
• Put on a silly dress and funny hat and tromp through the house.
• Fall down in the bedroom.
• Tell everyone there’s a deer at the front door.
• Put a turkey decoy in the front yard and tell everyone there’s something in the front yard they have to see.
• Slip a book into someone’s pillowcase.
• Balance a wad of play dough on the top edge of a door that’s partially open. Get people to open the door so it falls on them.
• Ding dong ditch (or as the case may be, knock knock ditch) your family, the more doors and the more times, the better.

A Bigger Trick

This was something I did to a group of friends probably five years ago, and since it had been long enough, I thought it was safe to use again but just on my family. It’s the old trick-’em-into-eating-something prank, but unless you don’t like bananas, it isn’t a gross trick.

First, take some graham crackers and crush them into crumbs (using a plastic baggie works best). Set aside.

Slice a banana into segments and then slice those down the middle.

Next. cover the banana segments in peanut butter. Getting the peanut butter to stick on the slippery side of the banana can be hard, but sometimes you have to commit if you want a prank to work.

 

You will now put the peanut butter covered banana mess into the plastic baggie that holds your graham cracker crumbs. Shake it around to cover the banana. You may have to press the graham crackers in so they stick and form a nice, believable coating.

 

And so now once you get enough of these put together, you’ve got a pan full of fake chicken nuggets. We don’t eat nuggets much at our house, so they are a treat (eww — why???). I had some real nuggets in the oven, so I told the kids these were homemade but I hadn’t had enough chicken so I had to supplement with store-bought nuggets. As he was coming to the table my oldest son, “Rex”, said that I should make those bananas with the peanut butter and graham crackers sometime. Mwahahahaha.

They don’t look exactly like chicken nuggets, but when you pretend the pan is hot, use a spatula to serve them onto the kids’ plates, and they smell real nuggets cooking in the oven, it makes it more convincing. You may have to sell it a little, but that’s part of pranking someone and being committed to your craft. Here’s the end result:

Lest you think no joke is off limits, I do set parameters around what can be used as a joke. Here’s what I tell the kids:

1. It can’t hurt anyone.
2. It can’t ruin anything.
3. It shouldn’t make the person embarrassed or feel bad.

These guidelines will change as they get older (or maybe not), but at this stage they need some guidance about how to pull a prank without humiliating someone or destroying our house.

Overall, it was a fun day without too many obnoxious moments…but we did have to put the kibosh on jokes after supper so we could get our homework done. And so far this morning, my coffee has tasted just fine.

Did you make it through April Fool’s Day without any serious mishaps? Do you have any good pranks you’d like to share?