18 missed calls

I've had my fair share of April Fools jokes played on me, more than most people I suppose. I think that having a birthday on April Fools' Day puts a giant target on my back. My mom thinks it's because I am fun to tease.

This morning my cell phone rang at 8:04, right as I was helping my kids gather their shoes and backpacks to head out the door to school. I answered it thinking it was probably someone wanting to wish me a happy birthday. No, it was someone I don't know asking about some extra tickets that I had for General Conference. I was a little confused and so was he. I took me a few seconds and then I realized that it was a prank. I guessed that my little brother Anthony (at BYU) had something to do with this but while I spent the next 5 minutes getting my kids out the door, 4 more calls came in. I called Anthony and we had a good laugh, but we could hardly talk because people kept calling on the other line. He did admit that he hung up a few signs around campus advertising that I had some extra tickets for conference. Nice. I quickly got off the phone telling him that I needed to change my voice mail right away. While I was doing that, 5 more people called. My new message which explained that I didn't have any tickets and it was an April Fool's joke stopped people from leaving messages, but I still had plenty of missed calls.... all morning long. I turned my phone off and figured if people really wanted to get a hold of me, they could call my home phone. I have to admit it was a pretty good prank from Anthony who still got me even though he is several states away. Impressive!

My good friend Rach who I've known since High School called me this afternoon and we started reminiscing about some of her favorite pranks (on me) over the years and I decided that I really should write some of these down. There have been many.

The first, well at least that I can remember, was my 8 year old birthday party. My parents let me have a sleep over and early in the morning my dad and older brother came bursting down to the basement where we were all sleeping and told us that there was a broken water pipe upstairs and the house was flooding. They were soaking wet and hollered for all of us to GET OUT QUICK! Panic set in and girls were grabbing favorite possessions and pillows, scrambling up the stairs and out the back door. I remember one girl started to cry. Once we were all outside my dad reminded us what day it was and said, April Fools! I'm not sure if we laughed then, but now I find it pretty funny. We had a silly breakfast with bugs frozen in our ice cubes, boiled eggs that were filled with jello, dirt pudding, and all sorts of other silly foods.

One year, when I was a little bit older, maybe Junior High age, my mom arranged a surprise party for me. All of my friends began to show up holding gifts of all shapes and sizes. I opened up the first gift and tried to act excited about the notebook and pencil that was inside. I thought it was a little strange when the next gift was also a notebook and pencil, and this time it was in a huge box. Then the next gift was also a notebook and pencil, and a very heavy rock. Yeah, all of my gifts were a notebook and pencil. Nice hu? Then my mom announced that she did have a real gift for me. Thank goodness. I opened it and there sat a nice new calculator which I did need for school. She kept insisting that I turn it on and when I did, it squirted me in the face.

My parents played lots of fun pranks over the years, but my older brother really had fun tormenting me and rarely missed a year.

One year my birthday fell on a Sunday. Chris glued my church shoes together, sole to sole. I was late getting ready for church that day and as my whole family was in the car and backing out of the driveway, I grabbed my shoes and hopped in the car. I saw that they were stuck together, but I underestimated the strength of super glue. I pulled, and pulled, and finally.... they came apart. Only, not the way I had expected. One shoe had two soles, the other had none. They had been shoes with a slight heel so the one shoe that now had two soles was quite a bit higher than the other. By now we were at church and we were running late so I no choice, I had to wear them. The worst part was that I was in the ward choir and we were singing that day which meant I had to walk all the way up to the stand, and since we were running late the congregation was full and everyone got to see me walk lopsidedly up to the front. I think I ditched the shoes after that and went barefoot the rest of the day.

One year Chris got up before me and put something in the shower head that made the water turn green when it came out. I think it was Knox gelatin but whatever it was, it was really gross.

One year he set up those pull fireworks all over my room, in my drawers and on my door. I think I jumped every time I set one of those dang things off.

One year in High School, he set my alarm clock an hour early. I got up earlier than everyone in my house on any given day because I had Jazz choir that started an hour before school officially started, so waking up to a quiet house was nothing new. However, when I got to school that morning and realized that I was the ONLY one at school (except for the janitor) I learned that I was once again, the victim of another April Fools joke.

In college Chris surprised me. He actually brought over a cake that he had made and frosted himself. I was suspicious but raved about how thoughtful it was of him. He and his wife sang Happy Birthday to me and I blew out the candles. He handed me a knife so I could slice the cake, only the knife went back and forth, back and forth, and not down. I kept trying to cut my cake only to realize that it wasn't a cake after all. My brother had frosted a phone book.

My friends got in on the fun too. Senior year we all decided that we would pull a prank on our parents. We decided that late at night we would sneak home to the wrong houses and let our parents find the wrong kid in bed the next morning which was April Fools' Day. My parents waited up for me so I let them in on the secret and with their permission I snuck into my friend Rachel's bed late at night. Her parents were asleep already so it seemed that our plan might work. Several other friends of mine were pulling off the same prank at other houses, or so I thought. Really, once I was tucked in, they had a late night get-together without me. They made a t-shirt and birthday signs to kill a little time, waiting for me to fall asleep. Once enough time had gone by, they snuck back over to Rachel's house where I was deep into dreamland and wrapped duct tape around me and the top half of the bed, basically they taped me into bed. Then, early the next morning (April Fool's Day) they woke me up using the feather and shaving cream trick and then laughed when I couldn't sit up, remember the duct tape. We all went out for breakfast, everyone looked great except me. They gave me the silly t-shirt they had made the night before so I didn't have to wear my pajamas at least, but I had crazy hair and no make-up. The worst thing was to realize that this whole fabulous plan we had was all a joke... on me.

In college, my roommate took the mate to each of my shoes on April Fools Day. I had plenty of shoes to wear, but only for my left foot.

Another year, a friend of mine crafted up a letter from Liberty Square Apartments, housing that I had applied to for the next year when I would transfer from Ricks College to BYU. The letter was to inform me of unacceptable circumstances that had come to their attention concerning a reference check from the manager of my current apartment. Apparently the check was unsatisfactory to the BYU honor code. The letter was written well and I have to admit, I had been in a bit of trouble with the manager of my apartment. The honor code at Ricks was very strict, and also very enforced. I was caught staying out past 11:00 a few times, and even worse, boys were in my apartment past 10:00. My roommate and I got caught one too many times and the whole apartment was put on quarantine for a week. So, of course I fell for this one. Boy was I mad. It took me awhile to calm down, even after my roommates let me in that it was all a prank.

My dad still tries to pull a fast one over me, but usually I can see right through it. He calls me on my birthday and casually tries to tell me that the President of the United States just called him or once he even tried to tell me that my mom was pregnant, that was a year or two ago. :)

It's a fun birthday to have. I'm so busy watching my back that I rarely even try to pull a fast one on anyone else. One year recently I did, and it worked. I finally got my older brother Chris back. It was one of the happiest days of my life, really. He and his family came to visit the weekend before my birthday. I got some LICE killing shampoo and put it in the bathroom that he and his family would be using to shower. I made sure the bottle was half empty and placed on the shower caddy at eye level so he couldn't miss it. Every morning, I was nervous that he would ask about it and I was so nervous to look him in the eye. I really had hoped that he wouldn't ask because I didn't think I could keep a straight face. He never did say anything which was good because my plan worked much better over the phone the day after they left, which was April Fools' Day. I called him and very apologetically told him that one of my kids has just been sent home from school because they had lice. I explained that all of my kids had had lice recently and I thought it was cleared up before they came to visit, but apparently I was wrong. (NONE OF THIS WAS TRUE.) I told him that since they had just been staying with us and his kids had slept near my kids, they most likely had lice as well. This was really bad timing because he and his wife were supposed to leave their kids to go on a cruise that very next weekend. I apologized over and over again, mostly for the bad timing and I also brought up the fact that his daughter Savannah's thick curly hair would be a pain to treat, really I wasn't sure what to say next and I could barely believe that he was actually falling for my prank. He said things like, "Wow, this call must have been really hard for you to make", and he asked me how to check his kids and what to look for. Finally, I happily told him it was all an April Fools joke, and I've gloated about it ever since.