I love a good practical joke and this Sunday happens to be April Fool’s Day.  Now I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull off anything spectacular because we are hosting a family birthday party for 25 people and there will be a lot to prepare for.

However, I do plan on playing a little joke with my kids at breakfast.  We have a pair of white porcelain cows with spouted mouths (I think they’re supposed to be used as creamers, but we use them for other things!).  It is a special treat to pull out the cows, fill them with milk and then pour into the kids’ cereal bowls.  But this time, they will be pouring colored milk.  Yep, the cows will be making pink and blue milk this Sunday morning.

How will the kids respond?  I am pretty sure that Sweet Girl will be thrilled to have yet another thing pink.  For Sweet Boy, I am fully expecting him to want nothing to do with his blue milk or cereal for that matter.  A new bowl will be in order.

All this thinking of practical jokes reminds me of the fun pranks we used to do in college.  There were so many!  But today, I’ll just share one.  My roommate was Adrienne and our dear friends who lived across the hall our junior year were Tara and Rachel.  We would go on the next year to be Suite-Mates (two dorm rooms connected by a bathroom) and play even more practical jokes on each other.

It all started with the fact that Tara was always loosing her keys which made for a perfect lead-in to our prank because the last phase would require us gaining entry into their dorm room while they were asleep.  (They always locked their door.)  So in preparation, we started lifting Tara’s keys.  Now keep in mind these were our close friends and our silent rule of practical jokes was no damage to property (yes, we were goody two-shoes!).

We would be hanging out in their room and just casually keep pick the keys up off the dresser and hold them for the afternoon or evening.  Just enough to really convince Tara that she was constantly misplacing her keys.  And as sadistic as this sounds, it became a fun game!

After a couple weeks of this, when Tara was sure to not be concerned by the fact that she couldn’t find her keys overnight, we gathered our props.  We needed a hair dryer, duct tape and a long extension cord.  We duct taped the hair dryer in the “on” position, plugged it into the extension cord and made our way into their dark room.

As if on some secret spy mission, Adrienne and I each had our own tasks once entry was obtained.  We unscrewed all light bulbs, duct taped the light switch off and left the unstoppable hairdryer in the middle of the room with the long extension cord running under their door to the hall.

It must have been about 3am when we, from the hall, plugged in the loud hair dryer and began to listen for the chaos.  And we weren’t disappointed!  Rachel started yelling at Tara to turn her hair dryer off, reprimanding her for using the hair dryer in the room while she was sleeping.  We could hear Tara fumbling around, unsuccessful in her attempt to stop the blaring and unwelcome noise.  With the room pitch dark since we had unscrewed all light bulbs and duct taped the master light switch off, there was little they could do.  Oh and I almost forgot!  We “pennied” their door shut as well.

Ultimately, it ended in Tara and Rachel shouting our names.  And when the gig was up, we opened the door . . . nearly rolling on the floor in laughter.  Years later, we are still laughing about it.  They definitely worked to get us back.  But we’ll let you be the judge of that . . . on another day.

Do you have any good practical jokes?  Please do share!