April Fool’s Day: Perfect Pranks and Practical Jokes for Family, Friends, and Co-Workers

“The first of April is the day we remember what we are on the other 364 days of the year.”
– Mark Twain

Note: These pranks range from harmless and innocent to cruel and impossible to pull off tastefully. They are listed here for the purpose of entertainment; should you attempt any of the following yourself, you do so at your own risk. That said, let the games begin!!

Family

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
– Euripedes

• For sinks with a spray nozzle, secure the trigger to the spray head using a rubber band (or better yet, Scotch tape colored with a marker to match the color of the nozzle). Make sure the nozzle is pointed straight ahead and slightly up if possible. The next person to turn on the water will get a unexpected shower.
• Always classic is the ages-old “short-sheeting the bed” trick. Pull back the non-fitted sheet from the bottom and fold it over about 1/3 of the way, so that when they get in bed their feet and ankles are not covered.
• Put sugar in the salt shaker.
• Mix beige or yellow-brown mixture of food coloring in with the milk to make it look rotten. This works best with cardboard containers. Take it as far as you want; drink it and make crazy faces or pretend to throw up for a greater effect.
• Lift up the toilet seat, wrap Saran Wrap over the bowl and put the seat back down. Works best at night or with family members who are particularly groggy when first waking up. Warning: this gets VERY messy.
• Switch the bags in the cereal boxes around, and see how long it takes everyone to notice they’re eating the wrong thing.
• Stuff tissue paper in the toes of everyone’s shoes; they’ll keep trying to put them on longer than you think.
• Unroll a few sheets of toilet paper so that a magic marker won’t show through, write, “Help! I’m lost in a toilet paper factory!” on one sheet and roll the others back up.
• Coat the toilet seat with Vaseline, Pam cooking spray or vegetable oil.
• This works only with clear, squeeze-top shampoo bottles. Unscrew the cap, lay a piece of Saran Wrap over the opening, secure it with a rubber band and put the cap back on. No matter how hard you squeeze that bottle, you’ll never get any shampoo.
• se bungee cords to keep younger siblings from getting out of bed when they wake up.
• Glue the eggs to the egg carton (best for families who eat breakfast together regularly).
• If you have a set of relatively small walkie-talkies, clip one underneath your dog’s collar and keep one in your pocket. Walk out of the room and say into your walkie-talkie in a gruff voice, “If he doesn’t let me out soon, I’m pooping on the rug again.”
• Fill the hairdryer with baby powder.
• For tubs with a knob in the middle that turns on the shower head, turn the knob and point the shower head towards where your victim will be standing.
• For those with non-cordless phones, tape down the click button that lifts up when you answer the phone. When someone calls, the phone will keep ringing even when answered.
• Coat the doorknobs with baby oil.
• Choose your pick of either toothpaste, shaving cream or whipped cream and fill someone’s socks with them. The trick is knowing which pair of socks to sabotage; otherwise, you’ll have to sabotage them all.
• Set a battery powered alarm clock for 3 in the morning and place it under someone’s (or everyone’s) bed.
• Tell your old-fashioned grandparents that you are gay, dating outside your religion and/or race, or having their first great-grandchild (not good for grandparents with weak hearts).

Friends

“Rather than appear foolish afterward, I renounce seeming clever now.”
– William of Baskerville (“The Name of the Rose”)

• Glue a cap to a pen (or the lid to a jar) and ask people to open it for you.
• Make brownies, but substitute Ex-Lax for some of the chocolate.
• Place flour on the tops of the blades of a ceiling fan.
• Open a white plastic security sticker from a CD or DVD and take out the metal strip that’s inside. Put it into someone’s coat or other pocket and watch them set off every theft detector they pass through.
• For dorm hallways with two doors immediately across each other, tie a rope to both doorknobs leaving about 6″ of slack and bang REALLY loud on both doors at 3 in the morning.
• Smear peanut-butter on the underside of a car door handle.
• Put whipped cream in a sleeping friend’s hand, then tickle his face with a feather.
• Find another sleeping friend and place his hand in a bowl of warm water. Warning: this is very messy!

At Work

“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.”
– Quintilian, De Instititione Oratoria

• Visit http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rubio/error95/ and download a program called Error95. Install it on any computer and set up your own customizable error messages to appear at predetermined intervals. Your co-workers will be surprised to find that their hard drive is experiencing “Selective Memory Loss.”
• In the off-chance that you fill vending machines for a living, take out the candy and put in an assortment of beer, condoms, pregnancy tests and bags filled with oregano or something similar.
• Put “Automatic Door” signs on doors that have to be opened manually.
• Send your intern to get double-sided transparencies, a light bulb repair kit or a left-handed screwdriver.
• Tape down the ball of a co-worker’s computer mouse.
• Plant a remote-controlled Fart Machine speaker in the conference room and push the button on the remote during an important meeting.
• For those who work in Wal-Mart, grab 20 boxes of condoms and deposit them at random in unsuspecting shoppers’ carts. The more elderly the shopper, the better.

All Purpose/Other

“The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.”
– William Shakespeare

• Set all the alarm clocks in a department store to go off at five-minute intervals.
• Tape over the porn at your local video store with The Wizard of Oz (or better yet, tape over The Wizard of Oz with porn).
• Put (preferably fresh) dog or cow manure in a paper bag and set it on fire on someone’s front porch. Ring the bell and run, then watch them stomp the flame out.
• Take a dump in a small Dixie cup and hide it in a rival’s house. They will tear their house apart trying to find the source of the smell. A much worse college variation on this is called the Upper-Decker. This is achieved by crapping in the upper tank of the toilet, resulting in brown toilet water even after repeated flushing.
• Microwave some fresh dog crap (in a microwave safe container, of course) in an enemy’s kitchen. The entire house will stink for weeks.
• Ask the shoe salesmen where to find the left-handed shoes.
• Leave an extremely large pile of soap suds in a someone’s car, bed, or other inconvenient place. Here’s how you do it: Fill a large bucket with hot water and add an entire bottle of dishwashing liquid, then drop in a few pounds of crushed dry ice. Be sure you are ready to vacate the premises, lest you yourself be covered in suds.
• Coordinate everyone in your classroom to sneeze or drop a book at the same time and confuse the hell out of your teacher.