Being that April Fools Day is coming up on Friday I am curious to hear about the best April Fool's prank that you played on someone or that was played on you. I have to think about this one for me but will add mine when I narrow the BEST one down.
The best April Fool's joke I played was about five years ago. The original creators of the Billy Bob teeth (snarled backwoods hill billy teeth)were in town for a trade show. My wife works in the optical field inside our local mall. I ran into these two guys that looked like they were straight from the movie Deliverence,they were wearing cover alls with no shirts work boots funky teeth and glasses. I asked them to do me this huge favor and play a joke on my wife and agreed that would be alot of fun since it was April Fools day.
As I watched from behind the phones outside of the store inside the mall, they walked into a store full of people and asked for her by name. She said...uhh thats me? He said ain't ya gonna give me a kiss sweet heart? She said I don't THINK SO!!! He said augh don't ya remember me we met under the bleachers at the county fair. I have never seen her that red in my life. At this time I figured I better save her and when I walked in and started laughing, the guys took their teeth out and told her it was all a joke. The store full of people busted out in laughter and I even recieved applaus. To this day she is still trying to top that one.
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Sometimes, when i'm lonely... i crawl into a laundry basket and tickle my ears. But, Some times I don't...
The one year in college, our college radio station pretended we had changed our format to all disco up until noon on April Fools Day. I came on at noon and fortunately got to end the madness!
Didn't Sports Iluustrated do an April Fools joke one year by doing a story on a fictional super pitching prospect named Sid Finch?
Sparky, I know who you're talking about! Billy Bob teeth is based in my home town! You probably met the owner, Jonah. His son goes to school with my daughter. That is too cool! My aunt actually works for Billy Bob Teeth (BBT). What a small world. That is a great April Fool's day joke.
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Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them you will be a mile away and have their shoes.
This april fools joke backfired on me and I learned a valuable lesson not only in life but of a mother's love for her children. I spent a few years in Hawaii going to school (OK, surfing too) When I finished there I began working in Utah at a resort--yes so I could ski all the time. I had not been home in three or four years (home being Milwaukee) and spoke with my parents maybe once a month. So on April fool's day I called home and reported to my parents that I was engaged and getting married on May 4th. My dad was furious and hung up becasue I was only giving a month's notice. My mother questioned me and asked why I had not ever mentioned seriously dating this girl. Mom asked all the usual questions. Then she got to "Where is she from?" I calmly said Africa. There was quite a long pause from my mother and she said, "oh, she is black, when will you introduce us to her. Now everything I said was true. However, I thought my mom would react very differently. I was getting married on May 4th, and my wife is from South Africa, but she is very fair and of Dutch and English decent. ( I still love to listen to that cute South African accent) I always found it amazing the immediate conclusions that people draw when I would say she was from Africa. She was also an illegal immigrant. So if I introduced her that way, people always assumed she was hispanic. I liked to use this to tell people not to judge. Long story short, I was so impressed that my mother reacted the way she did, did not judge and immediatlely accepted her before even meeting her.
I learned a valuable lesson that day, and I was definately the fool.
I was working at a Bermans Leather (now Wilsons) in high school and pulled this one on my manager. Being April 1st, we had just done our March numbers and my manager was always very panicky about how corporate would respond. This was on a slow Saturday and she left me alone in the store to get some lunch. Dumb move. When she came back I acted very nervous and agitated. I told her that the area VP had just been on the phone and was hopping mad about our March numbers. He was on his way, arriving soon, and wanted to see everything ship shape. I waited until she was up to a good lather and running around frantically trying to straighten up befor I let her off the hook.
The only thing that kept her from killing me was when I suggested we call our sister store at the next nearest mall and pull the gag on them. It was just as effective the second time.
The one guy is a dentist. I always forget his name, I had never met him before and I don't think he lives where I live. The other guy (the stocky one) is Jonah. He bought the other guy out of the business. The head office for BBT is right on the way to my parent's house and is located right next door to where my mom works. The company recently started a bunch of new ventures also. They are producing a type of shoe for women that has, of all things, shocks built in to them. Haven't tried those yet. He also had a worm farm, but it burned down last week. I just thought it funny that you met them and Jonah is from where I live. Small world.
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Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them you will be a mile away and have their shoes.
The best April Fool's joke I ever played was in 1991. I was working part time for an A/V company that provided the in house video service for the Hoosier (now RCA) Dome. The NCAA final four was being played with Duke, UNLV, Kansas and North Carolina. We had an NCAA official in the control room monitoring what we could and could not replay on the video screens. On Saturday March 30 the semi-finals were played. All evening the NCAA Official told us what we could and couldn't show and it began to get annoying. In the final seconds of of the Kansas-North Carolina game coach Dean Smith gets ejected from the game. Of course the NCAA official tells us we can not repaly anything.
So on Monday April 1st, the day of the Championship game we decided to pull a joke on the NCAA official. In the control room you can't easily see the video screens. We had to run highlights from the two semi-final games as the crowd entered. We had one tape that was edited the way the NCAA wanted and another tape showing the ejection of Dean Smith. We wired all the monitors in the control room to the "ejection tape". When the NCAA official came in we rolled the tape. When he saw the play leading to ejection he asked if we edited it out of the tape. We all played dumb not telling him if we had. He sees Dean Smith getting ejected and starts screaming to get it off the screens. We of course react slowly and he is saying he's going to get reamed for this mistake and he's not going down alone. By this time the entire control room is laughing. The look on his face was priceless. He was totally confused. We then told him "April Fool's" and had him look at the screens. When he realized he had been had he kind of laughed it off. But the rest of the night he didn't tell us once when to cut away from the action. He knew we weren't going to screw up. I just wish I could remember his name. I'd like to know if he ever really laughed about it.
That was a cool one, Ray! Timely, too, since the final four is coming up.
I have never really pulled any really good April fool's day jokes. I've pulled some jokes on people, but nothing that stands out in my memory right now. Glad to see there are people out there with enough creativity to do it.
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Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do criticize them you will be a mile away and have their shoes.
The one April Fool's that I remember the most was in 96 when I was a junior in high school. I was in the jazz band and we were on a trip to a jazz festival in Eau Claire (about 4 hours north of where I am), and then we played at the Mall of America as part of the trip. On the final day of the trip, we were driving home in the bus, when about an hour out of Milwaukee, the bus driver suddenly gets off the freeway and pulls over at a rest stop. We figured he needed to fuel up, which was odd, but we'd been on trips before and that had happened. 10 minutes went by and everyone started wondering what was going on. The band director was off the bus talking to the driver, kinda looking like something was wrong. They both come back on the bus, and our director announces that the bus has a major mechanical problem and that we can't use the bus any further. Then he said "we have two options- we can have a school bus here in 1/2 hour and then be on our way, or we can wait 2 hours for another coach bus and then go from there."
Everyone sat there, thought for a moment, and then said "we'll just wait for the coach bus". The director then said something along the lines of "ok..we'll sit here and wait for the coach bus. Can somebody tell me what day it is?"
And that's when we all froze and just stared in disbelief. We had been fooled. My director just busted out laughing, the driver was laughing..it was just unbelievable.
Then, the director said "you'd actually wait an extra hour and a half for a coach bus than ride the school bus? Wow!"
So..needless to say, we were bitter for a long time. When we got back, my mom came up to me and said that this retreat building I had just been to 3 weeks earlier had burned down. I loved this place very much and having just been the butt of a huge april fool's joke, I thought she was totally kidding...until I saw the news when I got home. It had actually burned down. She wasn't joking. I was totally crushed.
