April Fools Pranks by Linda Johnson

April Fools 2011 has come and gone. Considering that I love practical jokes, I was pretty easy on my friends this year. I did punk my Twitter followers with a series of Tweets that started mid-morning with this one: “Driving through beautiful North Cascade Highway. Washington is beautiful… could live here if online poker was legal.”

I followed up about 20 minutes later with, “Should have paid attention to the deer crossing signs. Just hit a big one. Glad it’s a rental car.” I immediately started getting texts asking if I was okay, which prompted the follow-up Tweet 10 minutes later that read, “Ooops… forgot to add April Fools.” Believe it or not, I was still getting phone calls and emails from friends who didn’t understand that the whole thing was an April Fools joke.

We’ve all been the victims of April Fools pranks. You know, the kind when someone glues a coin to the floor and laughs when you bend over and try to pick it up, changes the language setting on your cell phone, or borrows your car key, makes a duplicate key, and then moves your car in a parking lot a time or two.

My best friend, Jan Fisher, loves “gotchas” and we are always looking for opportunities to pull a fast one on each other. With April Fools still on my mind, here are a few of my favorite pranks I have played on her over the years.

The first one happened a dozen or so years ago when I owned Card Player Magazine. I used to travel to each of my full-page advertisers’ card rooms at least once a year and Jan sometimes went with me. On this particular day, we were scheduled to fly into Boston, where we would be picked up in a limo and driven to Foxwoods.

We knew from prior visits that there always were two VCR movies in the limo since it was a two-hour drive to the casino. We would pop in a movie and before you knew it, we would be arriving at beautiful Foxwoods.

During the flight to Boston, I said to Jan, “Let’s each write down two movie titles and we’ll pay each other $20 if either of the movies we picked is in the limo. Jan thought this would be a good bet for her since she knew the latest movie releases. When she saw that I had written down “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Around the World in 80 Days,” she probably thought she was on a freeroll.

Therefore, she was shocked when we got in the limo and the movies for this trip were “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Around the World in 80 Days.” As she handed me the $20 bill, she said, “I can’t believe how lucky you are!” I replied, “I can’t believe how gullible you are. Don’t you realize that I called ahead and ordered the movies?” I know I’m lucky, but she still should have realized something was awry when I nailed two titles out of the all of the possible movies in the universe.

My other all-time favorite prank happened a few years ago at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Jan and I have become very friendly with a group of lady poker players from Tulsa, Oklahoma called the Hold’em Hotties. These ladies are awesome! Most of them are a little older in physical years than I am, but they have the energy of teenagers.

They are hilarious and when we get together, we laugh until our sides hurt. Nothing is off limits with these ladies. There is lots of teasing and needling, all taken in good humor of course.

On this particular day, we were returning from a fantastic four-day trip to Branson, Missouri and had stopped for lunch. We were reflecting on what a great vacation it had been and Jan made the comment, “You Hold’em Hotties remind me of a male group of Canadian poker buddies, except they’re not trailer trash.” Everyone had a good laugh and then we scattered to do some shopping in the store in the lobby. When Jan went into the restroom, I quickly grabbed Karen Fisher and told her of my diabolical scheme.

I asked her to pretend like Jan’s comment about the Hotties being trailer trash had deeply hurt her and how it had brought back horrible memories of being teased as a child because she had grown up poor. Karen played it perfectly. When Jan came out of the restroom, she pulled her aside and with tears in her eyes, told Jan that she had been raised in a trailer and the kids had always called her trailer trash and made fun of her.

Now if you know Jan, you might know that she has a sarcastic sense of humor and a tough exterior, but she really is a marshmallow inside. If Jan ever thought she had hurt someone’s feelings, it would really upset her. So, as I’m watching from afar, I see Jan trying to assure Karen that she hadn’t meant any harm, that it was a joke, that she never would say or do anything to hurt her, etc.

Karen wasn’t letting Jan off the hook. Jan was shooting helpless glances at me while I shopped in a far corner of the store. When they finally broke apart so that Karen could go fix her eye makeup that had been messed up by her “tears,” I went up and innocently asked Jan what had happened.

Jan replied, “Linda, I really hurt Karen’s feelings when I was joking about the Hotties being trailer trash. She won’t accept my apology and I don’t know what to do. I was kidding of course, but apparently I hit a nerve because Karen grew up in a trailer and all of the kids teased her and now I made her relive all of those horrible feelings.”

About that time, Karen came out of the restroom and came walking toward us. I called out to her, “Hey Trailer Trash!” Jan was horrified and screamed at me, “Linda, why would you say that?” I responded, “Because we were pulling your leg! Gotcha!” This was one of my all-time best schemes ever.

I hope you enjoyed this column. By the way, Jan has played plenty of pranks on me over the years, so don’t feel too badly for her!