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An April Fool
March 31st, 2008
I tried to come up with a good prank to pull on you all, but to be honest, thunderstorms have kept my baby up three nights in a row and I am just not feeling all that creative. So instead I bring you a little April Fools Day necessary information.
The origins of April Fools Day, according to Wikipedia . Not as interesting as I had hoped, but worth the read.
Today’s post is more of a Link to the site most likely to steal your Tuesday, The Museum of Hoaxes! The Husband and I stayed up way to late last night reading our favorite pranks and hoaxes.
My favorite is :
In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
What are your favorite all time hoaxes and pranks? Mom and Dad( you are being paged to tell your favorites because I KNOW you both have some hilarious ones.)
Filed under Boy is my face red, Time Suckers | Comments (5)5 Responses to “An April Fool”
Ok, I have to say that one year my father thought it would be hilarious to wake mom up and tell her she was late getting us to school (He had to work and couldn’t take us himself). It was 7:30 and we lived roughly 30 minutes from the school, so we were definitely going to be late as we were still asleep. She ran to our rooms and yelled, “Get Up!!! We’re late for school!!” She then proceeded to get ready faster than I’ve ever seen her move only to be confronted by dad in the living room who was laughing hysterically (which for him means a giant grin and a laugh almost like Muttley of Hanna Barbara cartoon fame). My brother and I were both complaining that mom was making us get up. Then dad dropped the bomb on her, “April Fool’s!!” It was SATURDAY. We laughed so hard, mom was mad for awhile. And we all learned a good lesson…..don’t pull april fool’s jokes that cause people to jump out of bed earlier then they would have otherwise.
It’s crazy the memories that stick in your mind….almost all of my April Fool’s memories involve dad playing jokes on mom. How does he do it you ask? The man has a poker face that would make John Wayne fold. He can be laughing on the inside, but his facial expression conveys the most sincere of emotions.
The best gags I can remember where always done by my uncle. He called our house and my brother answered. He put on a fake voice and told my brother that he was from the telephone company and was running test on phones. I think my brother was in high school so he should have known better but, oh well. He asked my brother to make different noises each getting sillier and sillier until finally somehow he had my brother squawking like a chicken and actually flapping his arms like wings. I think a little after that my brother figured it out.
We are getting a new pastor today. I really hope he doesn’t turn out to be an April fool. (How many times do you think I will hear that line today?)
I’m a fan of the Left-Handed Whopper from Burger King. To think that people are dumb enough to think that something that is already round (thereby eliminating the necessity of a left-handed product) should/could/would be made into a lefty product is just silly. Really. Come on. Besides, if the condiments were to be rotated 180 degrees, don’t you think most lefties would be smart enough to just rotate their own burger? Just saying.
Here’s that prank:
In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, “many others requested their own ‘right handed’ version.”
I blogged about my favorite prank today: it consisted of saran wrap, masking tape and a toilet.
At first I couldn’t think of any, but, now I do recall a few pranks played on me over the years. I suppose the most memorable would have been done by a co-worker at a time when I spent the better part of my days on the phone. She arrived early and coated the earpiece of the handset with vaseline and the handgrip with some kind of black ink. When I got my phone for the first time of the day I got a greasy ear and a black palm!
Though it wasn’t an April Fool prank the one at home I most remember is crawling into bed after the children were asleep and hubby had left town for a business meeting. JHJ owned a gigantic rubber spider, and somehow it made its way under the sheets and seriously startled me though I was well acquainted with it.
The following morning, over breakfast, I asked the children which of them had put it in my bed. Naturally, both feigned ignorance, but JHJ looked the most guilty of the two. After they left for school, I made his bed placing the icky spider in it to surprise him that night. During the course of the day, I forgot about it and that night he fell asleep on the den floor. I carried the sleeping child upstairs to his room and carefully pulled down the covers only to scare myself upon revealing the creepy thing I had forgotten, thus, waking him in my fright.
The best part is that after hubby came home, we all learned he was the actual instigator planting the toy before he left town.