I’m not the biggest prankster I know but I have pulled some mighty fine April Fools’ jokes in years past. In fact, there are two in particular which really stand out.
I pulled a dandy on a co-worker of mine 12 years ago! Since I was working in a smaller company at that time, I had to share an office with a gal named Jean. She liked to rib me incessantly about any number of things so I felt comfortable in devising an April Fools joke at her expense. Since Jean was in collections, she was the contact person for customers to call when they had a question about invoices, payments, etc. So while Jean was out to lunch I had a female friend of mine call her voice mail with the following message:
Hi, this is Ellie and I have a question regarding an invoice on our February statement. I can be reached at 952-XXX-XXXX. Now there are two of us here named Ellie so be sure and ask for me. My last name is “Funt”.
The phone number I had my friend reference was the number to the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley. My plan was for Jean to call the Zoo number and ask for “Ellie Funt”. And it worked like a charm!!! The woman on the other end of the phone laughed uproariously and then informed Jean that someone must be playing an April Fools joke. By this time, I’m sure my face was three shades of purple, which gave me away. So upon ending the phone call, Jean chucked various objects at me.
Three years later, in the year 2000, my gal and I met some friends at their house on this Saturday afternoon. From there, we were going to a local Fuddrucker’s to have lunch. At this time in their lives our friends Tony & Michelle, who would be in our wedding party three months later, had a 2 ½ year old daughter and another girl due in a month. Tony kind of slapped me on the back and said ”Someday you’ll have little ones of your own running around.” That kind of rhetoric had grown rather wearisome since Tony & Michelle were obsessed with having kids right after they got married. And they did. Apparently they were incredulous that not everyone felt the same way. The fact of the matter was Jen & I wanted to wait at least a few years before we even made a decision about children.
Instead of lashing out at Tony, I decided to mess with him a little bit. I told him that a few weeks before the wedding I was going to get the ol’ “snip, snip.” That’s right, the Big “V” (and I don’t mean Vegas)! He initially laughed, thinking I was kidding. But I managed to say it with a straight face even though I darn near ruptured an internal organ trying to keep from cracking up. A few minutes later, Jen and I drove to the restaurant with Tony & Michelle following us. Once we sat down to eat, Michelle was conspicuously silent. I later found out why. Tony told her in the car of my “plans” to ensure there would no kids in our future. Michelle was so distraught by this "development" that she and Tony proceeded to pray for us the entire 10-minute drive to the restaurant.
As we finished lunch, we said our goodbyes. I then said to Tony ”Oh, by the way, what day is today?” Tony replied, “Uh, Saturday, why?” I then said ”April 1st, right?”
Tony laughed hysterically. Michelle was downright ticked. Oh well, I think I made my point.
Today is a busy day so I don’t think I’ll be adding to my lore of April 1st humor. But it's fun to look back!!
------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment