I love April Fool’s day. Love it!!! I remember the first time I fell for it. I was around 7 or 8 years old. I came downstairs for breakfast, walked into the kitchen, and my mother looked at me and said; “What’s happened to your nose??!!” Fearing the worst (although I’m not exactly sure what that was) I ran up to the bathroom to look. There was nothing wrong with my nose – save for it being slightly oversized and with a spot. My mother laughed and said “April Fool’s”! That was it. I was hooked (which is not another nose reference).
Over the years I have played various tricks on friends and family. However, the unbridled joy I have had over the past couple of years whilst playing tricks on my children has taken it to a whole new level.
I didn’t really do it when they were younger as I didn’t want to upset them (well, I did but I was advised against it) but now they are older (Daughter: 20 and Son:17) I am making up for it.
It started with simple things, for example three years ago I set off the house fire alarm at 6 am. Then two years ago, when April 1stwas on a Sunday, I quickly woke my son up early and told him he was late for school!
Not everything has gone well of course. For example that same year I contacted my daughter’s ex-boyfriend and asked him to play a trick on her with me. In retrospect that wasn’t my best idea.
However, last year I surpassed everything….
My son had been taking part in GCSE drama exams. He loved one of the pieces he was doing but HATED the other one. So he was delighted when, at the end of March, they performed their pieces for the last time and they were filmed. I then contacted his drama teacher, explained my penchant for the April Fool, and asked if she would help. So on April 1st, during their Drama lesson, the teacher announced that all the filming had gone well – apart from one piece. My son’s face dropped as she informed him that it was the piece he didn’t like and that he would have to perform it again. “I knew it would be me!?” he exclaimed. “Yes” said the Teacher, “Mainly because your father asked me to do it”. She then, to the merriment of the whole class, excluding my son’s, explained what had happened. Oh the joy!
This was good, but not as good as my daughter’s prank last year. She is a Uni student and therefore very careful with what she spends. So I bought a domain name for the University, set up an email address and wrote to her informing her that she hadn’t paid for her course or accommodation and that she needed to pay immediately or would have to leave. She rang me and told me what had happened. I then told her what I had done. How we laughed. Well, when I say “we”…..
This year, everything was all planned way in advance. However, I obviously hadn’t foreseen the circumstances in which we would all find ourselves. So I had to rethink.
Both children are having online lessons. So I obtained the email addresses of their tutors/teachers and asked them if they would set a difficult task, with short notice, for each of them. They kindly agreed.
However, on receiving the assignment this morning, after what happened to him last year, my son suspected something was going on. He asked me if I had set this up. I of course denied it. But he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to do the work in case it was a prank (and it was a LOT of work) yet he didn’t not want to do it in case it was genuine. So, after thinking and worrying about it for 30 minutes, he wrote a very eloquent email to his teacher asking her to excuse his paranoia but that he was wondering if he had been set up. The teacher wrote back telling him that she would never waste his time, and that it was an important task and that… yes, his father had asked her to do it. I still claim a win.
I now had to wait for my daughter’s reaction to her assignment – when she eventually woke up! However, whilst waiting, I received an email from her tutor. He informed me that his head of department had seen the email he had sent and that, by lying to students for ‘practical joking’ purposes he had gone against the university guidelines. He told me that he would probably have to face a tribunal and that I would be contacted about it. I was devastated!
I wrote back to him and apologised.
Only after I sent the email did I realise.
I wrote back and congratulated him on ‘getting me’!
He laughed.
Well done that tutor.
Oh and when my daughter did eventually arise, she did the work – only for him to tell her online, in front of the other students, that I had set her up.
I’m sure she’ll speak to me again soon.
There are some people who wanted to ban April Fool’s Day this year because of the circumstances. I’m certainly not one of them. It’s especially at times like this that we all need a bit of fun.
I’m already planning next year’s…..
Bennett Arron 