April Fools’ and I – we don’t exactly get along.

Don’t get me wrong, I love playing pranks on people, especially ones of vengeance. Not only does planning such a plot grant me the opportunity to be creative, but when I know I’m pranking to get even, I get the pleasure of escaping the outcome with little guilt.

However, April 1 is my birthday and unlike Easter, April Fools’ Day is the same day every year. Although that may seem like good news, I can guarantee it brought more disappointment as opposed to excitement, specifically in grammar school. As a fourth grader, if your birthday fell on a school day, you were awarded the title of the coolest kid in class for six glorious hours.

Unfortunately, my birthday celebrations were annually disrupted. Year after year, my peers rejected the idea that my birth date could possibly be on such date and deemed it an April Fools’ joke. I particularly received the rejection from my teachers, who neglected to check my school records for my actual date of birth.

Thus, I never played a prank in honor of April Fools’ Day. In order to overcome my previous resentment toward the holiday, I decided to partake in the celebration this year. Below I kept entries on the practical jokes I tracked down on the web and played on my unsuspecting friends and family.

*Mayo eat your sandwich?*

As I slathered a generous serving of mayonnaise into a turkey sandwich, I scanned the area sheepishly. I felt more like I was the evil step mother in a Spanish soap opera, sprinkling poison into my victim’s drink as opposed to offering my boyfriend a sandwich with the condiment he loathed the most: mayonnaise.

Of the three pranks I performed, I was hoping the one involving mayonnaise would be the least successful. Then again, I was really curious to find out how he would react to it. I often wondered what bad experience made my boyfriend despise mayo.

When I brought our sandwiches into the living room, he was engrossed in a conversation with my brother, so I left the plate next to him as he sat cross-legged on the floor. Although I was pretending to pay attention to “Toy Story” on the television screen, I consistently monitored him from the corner of my eye. He must have picked up the sub on three different occasions before he finally took a bite.

I was expecting a comment, sour face or a gesture that indicated he reached the mayo, but saw no such sign. The sandwich disappeared in five minutes tops. He thanked me for the food and proceeded to move onto other matters, like the concert we were attending next week. Only after the movie did he mention the sandwich had mayo, but smiled and said that mayo was still not very good.

*Loose change*

One of my 12-year-old brother’s preferred hobbies might as well be collecting loose change. He does it more often than eating but never as much as playing “Call of Duty.” My brother is so intrigued by change he finds on the sidewalk that he owns a 50 States Quarters collection and accumulates Canadian pennies on the side. I decided to play a practical joke on him that required a little more work – I made him think he found a loose change goldmine, coincidentally right in front of our house.

All I needed for the prank was a couple of coins and a .18 ounce bottle of Krazy Glue. I figured that he would be heading out to school around 8 a.m., so I woke up an hour early, emptied my piggy bank and was extremely selective about the group of coins I chose. I narrowed down my collection to nine coins: five state quarters, two of which he owned but were extremely rusty, two pennies dated before 1960, a Canadian penny and an everyday dime. I went outside, crouched on the ground and glued every coin down on the sidewalk – all in close proximity of each other.

Around 8 in the morning, I walked my brother outside and saw his eyes widen as he noticed the change on the ground. He dashed for the Canadian penny and to his dismay, he could not lift it off the concrete. He moved on to the quarters, but those were stuck too.

Finally, I gave myself away when I chuckled as he went for the last coin in the group. In response, he came over and gave me a playful punch, then walked away. Of course, I felt a bit regretful so I consequently scraped the Canadian coin off the sidewalk and we were even.

*Whoopee cushion classic*

I had the cushion lying around at home and found it tempting to use, considering it is an easily reusable prank. In previous occasions, I used it on my brother and it worked every time. I decided to try it on someone new.

Around dinner time, I expect a hungry dad to enter the kitchen and consequently ask my mom a series of redundant questions. Is the food ready? When will the food be ready? What did we cook? Should he start cooking instead? I figured the whoopee cushion would buy us some time on the stove and keep my dad entertained for a while.

Luckily for my dad, he had an audience when I decided to play the prank on him. My godmother came over for dinner. Sure enough, as my dad stepped into the kitchen, he did not notice the trap in his chair. I was facing away from the kitchen table when my dad took a seat, but not long after I heard his palms touch the table did I hear a noise that sounded like a cross between an elephant and a broken car engine.

Promptly after, I heard a giggle emerge from my godmother’s seat. As I turned around, my dad was shaking his head and started telling my godmother what a “troublemaker” I was. The conversation between my dad and our visitor lasted around 15 minutes, which allowed me enough time to set the table without my dad’s persistent questioning.

The catch? I received the whoopee cushion treatment later that night.