The Art of the Prank

"“Well, remember what you said, because in a day or two, I'll have a witty and blistering retort! You'll be devastated THEN!" Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes


We’ve just passed the Ides of March, and as the calendar shows us careening toward April Fool’s Day, a note is required here about my family.

We all have our opinions about what we might do if we were elected President. Our oldest son Ethan, when asked this question by an early elementary school teacher, had a laundry list, which included perhaps most notably: any women who had pierced ears would be required to wear earrings.

So we all have our list of wishes. And I am fully convinced that if my father were President, an Executive Order would be issued instituting April Fool’s day as a National Holiday, with some sort of Presidential or Congressional Honor to be given to the person who had played the best prank that year.

A large cash prize would be awarded, much like when the Nobel Prize is issued, and perhaps a plaque or some sort of trophy would be given though I’m not sure what the trophy might actually look like (a clown having a cream pie smashed in its face? a rubber chicken?) and the President (my father) would be required to MC the event with scores of onlookers, a real A-list crowd, watching video after video of the best pranks pulled that year in a variety of categories…(“The 2009 nominees for best practical joke involving livestock are…”)

And if an Award Committee were created to vote for nominees, my father would be nominated many, many times.

The list of pranks this man has played over the course of his 63 years is truly monumental, but to give you several reference points for what I’m talking about I’ll give you these two:

--First One: My dad’s best friend when we were growing up was Bill Smith. Bill was a vice president of marketing for a major retailer, and worked with a man he wanted to prank so… Bill employed my father’s service to: a) load 2 junk snowmobiles on a trailer; b) drive to the man’s house on a Saturday when he knew the guy would be gone; and c) show up at his front door, explaining to the man’s wife how her husband had agreed to buy these rusted-out, unusable snowmobiles for $200, and how he had agreed to pay cash. And yes, my dad supposed he could accept a check but he didn’t quite have enough gas to get all the way back home so could he also get $20 in cash as well???

And she relented, all of which nearly ended their marriage. When the man came home, he found his wife in tears with cries of ‘how could you?’ and ‘I thought we agreed no major purchases!’ and so on, and in the middle of the chaos and the crying and the arguing the light bulb came on and he uttered one word:

SMITH.

But this wasn’t the end of this one. Fast-forward six months later when my dad is playing Santa Claus for a Christmas party for the same company that Bill and this guy work for. My dad shows up at the restaurant with the “Ho-Ho-Ho!” routine, bringing gifts out of his large red cloth bag, each one tailored to something specific and funny about each person, and the last one he gives out is a small, gift-wrapped box which he hands to Bill’s friend. And as Santa leaves the restaurant wishing everyone Merry Christmas!, and Happy New Year!, the friend opens the box and finds…

The check. Written by his wife, six months before.

--Second One: Bill gets my dad to go to a shoe repair place, one of those stores you might find tucked away in a corner of a mall that does a dozen different things like shoe shining, shoe sole replacement, and…making replacement keys, and he asks for a bunch of botched keys, that is to say, keys that were cut with a defect and couldn’t be used.

And he takes these keys, and to help Bill out –Bill who wants to prank a friend (with friends like these, right?) -- he gets little tags and writes the friend’s phone number and “If found, please call…reward” on each of them.

And he drives down to the worst part of Grand Rapids, an area full of prostitutes, pimps, and the homeless, the kind of people who are all looking to make a quick buck, and he throws a set of keys onto the sidewalk every couple of blocks.

And about an hour later, the phone calls begin.

And after about the fifth somewhat unintelligent/highly unintelligible phone call to his house, the friend realizes what’s happened. But he’s no slouch either when it comes to pranks, so he changes his home answering machine message to say: “If you’re calling about a set of lost keys, please call…” and he gives out BILL’S phone number…

Ouch.

And so it goes. My dad’s the sort of person you find yourself thinking about on nights you can’t sleep. What would be the best way to get him back?...or what could out-prank that prank?

It’s tough, too, you know? It’s that old thing, it’s hilarious when it happens to somebody else, not so much when it’s you…

So last week, I’m off for a few days and my wife and I are sitting in my parent’s living room talking about where we want to have lunch, and my mom says “we should go to Fire Mountain Grill, your dad eats there all the time and Sarah Palin’s sister works there.”

Um, I’m sorry what?

“Mom, what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, it’s her, you can tell by looking at her.”
“No, I need you to clarify here, are you saying this is somebody who looks –"
“ No, no, it’s really her. Your dad eats there all the time and struck up a conversation with her. He asked her if anybody told her she looks like Sarah Palin, and she said, ‘well actually, I don’t tell a lot of people but that is my sister.’ “

So at this point I was intrigued. No, obsessed, not because I’m a big Sarah Palin fan but because of this other idea I’ve had for about 10 years that it would be a really cool idea to write a book – which I still might do, so don’t steal my idea – which would involve me having my picture taken with dozens of different sort-of-famous people. Like a guy who’s a driver for Bono, or somebody who’s a waiter where George Clooney always eats, that kind of thing.

Or Sarah Palin’s sister.

But of course, you know from what I’ve told you about my father already where this is going. My mom assures me that, yes, this really is her. We get to the restaurant, get seated in a section across from where she’s working, and after discussing over lunch with my brother how we’re going to approach her to try to get a picture, I turn our digital camera on and the message reads: “Battery Exhausted.” No kidding, that’s what it said, not “Battery Needs Charging” or “Low Power”. So it wasn’t going to happen.
My brother assured me this would almost be better, because it could turn into one of those urban legend things…where I’ve never actually had my picture taken with Sarah Palin’s sister, by I know a guy who’s had his picture taken with her, and we could put that on this very blog (future post, perhaps.)
I thought this a grand idea, so we got up from the tables and got to the parking lot when my mom comes through the door behind us shouting, ‘John come back – she wants to meet you.’

So I did. I went back in, and met this woman who really does bear a kind-of/sort-of-in-a-way resemblance to an older version(?) of Sarah Palin (and hey, she even has glasses, right?) and it’s all “So nice to meet you,” and “Your dad comes in here all the time.” So at this point I really was pretty convinced.
Until we got home that evening, and found the voice mail service from my mom telling us it was all a hoax.
And she was going to kill my father.

So here we are, a mere two weeks from the first of April…
And I’m WIDE open for suggestions –
Please, PLEASE, comment. Throw me a bone, here, people, if you have an idea…

I've been thinking about this for close to thirty years. This might be the year it happens.