{"id":18,"date":"2012-04-12T00:30:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T18:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=18"},"modified":"2012-04-12T00:30:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T18:30:30","slug":"the-best-april-fools-day-joke-i-never-played","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"THE BEST APRIL FOOL’S DAY JOKE I NEVER PLAYED"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have some time today so I’m going to trying and knock out this blahg.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong>\"ScottIt has been ten days since April Fool’s Day and I haven’t written a blahg since March 22nd.\u00a0 That is no April Fool’s joke!\u00a0 I meant to write a blahg earlier and even thought about having it come out on April 1st but I just couldn’t find the time.\u00a0 Besides, if it came out on the first of April, you probably wouldn’t have believed it.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My friend Glenda, or I should say our friend Glenda because she was my wife’s friend first, has the dubious distinction of being born on April 1st.\u00a0 She also has the dubious distinction of having Henderson sideburns but if you look at my picture, you’ll see I haven’t kept my sideburns; I’ve barely kept my hair.\u00a0 For those keeping track, I am not losing my hair, it is just becoming more and more transparent.\u00a0 I digress.\u00a0 Glenda was born on April Fool’s Day and she has Henderson sideburns despite being anything but a Henderson.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Glenda always had to be vigilant on her Birthday because many people tried to pull some type of joke on her to help her celebrate her natal day.\u00a0 She was very vigilant indeed because when I met her in University, she maintained that no one had been able to slip anything past her on that day.\u00a0 She also had certain restrictions that she believed applied about April Fool’s Day and that mainly all pranks had to be played before noon if they were to count.\u00a0 I’m not sure if she made this up or if it’s the rule.\u00a0 But then, who’s ever heard of April Fool’s Morning?\u00a0 I’m digressing again.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This part of the narrative is not all that interesting and I’ll jump right to the point.\u00a0 I managed to play a successful prank on Glenda on April 1st.\u00a0 It wasn’t even all that great of a joke.\u00a0 Over breakfast at the Dining Hall, I told her she had a spider crawling up her sweater.\u00a0 I didn’t know she was severely afraid of spiders at the time or I wouldn’t have chosen that joke to play on her.\u00a0 To say the least, she freaked.\u00a0 She was also very angry with me.\u00a0 It wasn’t just about the spider gag but that I had successfully ruined her track record of avoiding all shenanigans on her Birthday.\u00a0 I will tell you that I didn’t push my luck and try again in the ensuing years.\u00a0 My record with Glenda stands at one.\u00a0 I told you that this part wasn’t all that interesting.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As you might have gleaned, I am a bit of a joker or jokester or whatever the correct terminology may be.\u00a0 I am quick with my wits and if there’s a great opportunity for a gag or great retort, then I’m all over the situation.\u00a0 I don’t remember all of the April Fool’s jokes that I’ve played or attempted to pull over the years but I’ll recite a couple.\u00a0 Once, before our youngest was born in 1998, I told some co-workers that Jeanette was pregnant again and that I wasn’t too happy about it.\u00a0 In fact, my wife Jeanette was pregnant at the time and Abbie arrived in December that year.\u00a0 We just didn’t know Jeanette was pregnant that April.\u00a0 The joke wasn’t all that funny in retrospect.\u00a0 We had tried for a while to have a third child and it just wasn’t happening and I was getting very disappointed.\u00a0 For me to use this as the focal point of a hoax made it even more compelling and the people at work soon bought into it.\u00a0 It was pretty mild really.\u00a0 I didn’t let it run the course of the day and when people discovered the truth they were disappointed because they knew how much I had hoped for a third child.\u00a0 As I said, the joke was on me, Abbie was already on her way.\u00a0 If Jeanette knew she was pregnant then she pulled the greatest April Fool’s joke by not telling me.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another joke from that reoccurring April day, that I recall, also was delivered at work.\u00a0 I was working for the Community Development Council of Quinte and we were working on a report about poverty in our region.\u00a0 We came across the name of a small town in the outlying regions with which we were not familiar.\u00a0 I began to do further research on the community only to find there was nothing really significant about the area.\u00a0 I did not immediately share this information.\u00a0 Instead, I drafted a phony letter from a government official in response to a request for information that I hadn’t really made.\u00a0 The letter detailed how the community in question was a penal colony for persons who were caught cheating on their welfare applications.\u00a0 Welfare is a form of government assistance offered to individuals and families who have no other source of income.\u00a0 Our government, at that time, was overly concerned that these most marginalized of persons were cheating the system and acquiring funds to which they weren’t entitled.\u00a0 The government’s over-zealousness on this issue later lead to their loss in the next election.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fraudulent letter that I drafted was never meant to be taken seriously and I even included fake names in the document such as Dewey Chetham (Do We Cheat ‘Em) & Anne Howe (And How).\u00a0 The insignia graphic I used on the letterhead even included naval objects such an anchor and life-preserver even though the community in question was land locked and the Government Ministry who drafted the letter was not genuine.\u00a0 The contact phone number also spelled out April Fools if you checked the corresponding letter on a number key-pad.\u00a0 My co-workers, however, bought it hook, line, and sinker.\u00a0 They missed all the clues that suggested the letter was not genuine.\u00a0 I had to let the cat out of the bag when they started protesting vehemently and were on the verge of phoning the number contained in the letter.\u00a0 There was no disappointment in that joke.\u00a0 Everyone thought it had been well played.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So you can see that I take April Fool’s Day seriously.\u00a0 I sometimes take weeks to concoct the perfect prank.\u00a0 One year, however, I didn’t play an April Fool’s joke and that backfired on me.\u00a0 I don’t know why I hadn’t taken advantage of the day to pull one over on my co-workers.\u00a0 I know that they had expected something but it never came.\u00a0 The following day was quite different and didn’t work in my favor.\u00a0 That April 2nd was a normal work day and according to my morning ritual, I dropped off our two oldest children at the home of some friends down the road.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had to be at work early and these friends had two daughters who went to the same school.\u00a0 They agreed to put my children on the bus with theirs so that I could be at work on time.\u00a0 On the way to Bruce and Jane’s (the names of our friends in case you were interested), I encountered a strange situation.\u00a0 Their house was ten minutes down the road and there were only a handful of houses and a campground between our two homes.\u00a0 Passing the campground, I spied an ostrich walking on the road in the direction that I was driving.\u00a0 Yes, I said an ostrich.\u00a0 This part is all true.\u00a0 My children were reading books and when I cried out that there was an ostrich on the road, they didn’t even look up.\u00a0 They both believed this was my missed April Fool’s Day joke.\u00a0 Only when I slowed the van, did they look up from their books to find that I had been telling the truth.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ostrich kept his pace trotting in my front of my vehicle for about half a kilometer and then he ran off down a side road just past the campground.\u00a0 We all were stunned and didn’t know what to think of it all.\u00a0 I continued on down our road and after a bend in the road, I encountered an older man and a young girl wrestling with another ostrich.\u00a0 I rolled down the window and informed the gentleman that there was another ostrich down the road.\u00a0 He yelled at me that he knew that and would I please just go.\u00a0 I guess when you’re wrestling an ostrich you don’t have much patience and manners are the first thing to go.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong>\"OstrichesBy then, I had guessed that there must be an ostrich farm somewhere nearby.\u00a0 I took the fellow’s advice and continued on to Bruce and Jane’s and dropped off my children.\u00a0 I left it to my children to tell our friends about our strange encounter.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At work, I recounted my morning experience only to have no one believe a word.\u00a0 Frankly, I wouldn’t have believed it if it didn’t happen to me.\u00a0 I tried all day to convince my co-workers of the ordeal with the ostriches to no avail.\u00a0 They, like my children, were certain that this was the prank that should have been played the day before but I had waited to make it more convincing.\u00a0 My wife call at lunch time, as she always did, to see if there were any issues with the children because she was the one who always picked them up from Bruce and Jane’s on her way home.\u00a0 She also did not believe my ostrich tale.\u00a0 I urged her to check with the children and ask them what happened on the way to school that morning.\u00a0 I was sure that when she did that, the children would lend credence to my story. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I arrived home that evening, my wife informed me that the children had not told her anything about ostrich’s when questioned about their ride to school.\u00a0 I was flabbergasted.\u00a0 Here was a great experience that no one believed had happened.\u00a0 I wasn’t sure why my children didn’t back up my claims.\u00a0 I called them into my wife and I and asked them what happened on the way to school.\u00a0 They replied that nothing had happened and it was a normal journey as usual.\u00a0 Again I was flabbergasted.\u00a0 I mentioned the ostriches and asked why they didn’t recall them from this morning.\u00a0 Their answers were simplicity.\u00a0 The experience with the ostriches did not happen on the way to school.\u00a0 The ostrich encounter had happened on the way to Bruce and Jane’s.\u00a0 So when questioned about their ride to school they thought they were being asked about the bus ride which had been uneventful.\u00a0 It’s all about the questions you ask.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 Eventually I was vindicated with my wife. \u00a0 It took longer with my co-workers.\u00a0 I had to eventually bring one of the children to work to corroborate my story.\u00a0 I could have said they were elephants instead of ostriches for all they believed me.\u00a0 I am glad, however, that they weren’t elephants.\u00a0 I never did find out where the ostrich farm was but for a few days after this event, a ball of feathers lay dead on the ice near the campground.\u00a0 Obviously one of the ostriches had made it that far and had died there.\u00a0 I had noticed it but didn’t know where I could report it.\u00a0 If it had been an elephant, it would have gone through the ice and the no one would have been any the wiser.\u00a0 At least I was…wiser that is.\u00a0 I’ve since curbed my April Fool’s Day jokes.\u00a0 How can you even top the joke that you never played? <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have some time today so I’m going to trying and knock out this blahg.\u00a0 It has been ten days since April Fool’s Day and I haven’t written a blahg since March 22nd.\u00a0 That is no April Fool’s joke!\u00a0 I meant to write a blahg earlier and even thought about having it come out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[26,4,25,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}