My roommate Mikix and I have a several-year-long history of April Fools pranks, specifically the kind where I prank him. In the past years he has lamented the fact that he doesn’t take it as seriously as I do, and this year he got his act together. This is an account of the ridiculousness that led up to and ultimately went down on March 31st, 2007.
Several Times Over the Past Year
I spent some time thinking about the prank I would pull on Mike this year. I like to have this kind of stuff ready in advance, because some pranks require planning and they always get better the more you think them through. After some discussion with my girlfriend Meg, I had a pretty solid plan formulated in my head. I will not be revealing this plan because, as you will find out, I did not end up getting to pull it on Mike due to circumstances, and I may want to use it in the future.
March 13, 2007
Mike sends me a gmail chat message asking if I want to help him pull a prank on our other roommate Nick this year. The prank is to throw him a surprise birthday party on a day that is not his birthday (which is a reference to one of our favorite episodes of Sealab 2021). The twist here is that we’d be doing it on March 31st, a day before April Fools, because nobody suspects it then. I respond negatively to his idea, thinking that this is too close to his actual birthday (April 9th) to work as a fake birthday party. I don’t think throwing an actual surprise birthday party a week and a half in advance is that unheard of. At any rate, Mike is extremely insistent that it’s a good idea, so I offer my support. March 31st is when one of our game days is happening, so he assures me that even if the prank falls through, there will be a game day to make up for it.
Mike starts a gmail thread about the prank on Nick including everyone that will be coming to our apartment the 31st for game day (except Nick, of course). This gets me thinking, if I’m going to organize my prank on Mike, I’m going to need to get my shit together, so I subsequently start a gmail thread about my prank on Mike, including a smaller core set of friends.
March 14-30, 2007
Much planning is done on both fronts, and by the 31st, shit is about to go down.
March 31, 2007
As it turns out, Nick had to go into work. This works out wonderfully for our prank on Nick, as it gives us lots of time to prepare. A few of the inner circle and Mike and I spend some time buying such things as “Happy Birthday” balloons, cake ingredients, and noisemakers. During the day, I send an offer to pick Nick up from the T station, for the public reason that it will get him home faster for gaming, for the secret reason that I need to stall him for Mike’s prank and give everyone time to set up everything and then hide, and for the double-secret reason that I need to confer with him in confidence about my prank on Mike.
Over the course of the day, several friends of ours show up, and we play some Citadels as well as some Wii games. When 7pm comes, I’m ready to do this thing. Nick gives me a call when he’s about to be at Porter. I meet him and his coworker Casey at the T station, we pick up some liquor, and return home.
As we enter the apartment, he walks into the room where everyone is hiding, and I hear a shout of “SURPRISE!” which I join in on. I follow him into the room, and see a banner hanging on the wall which says “Happy Birthday Nick & Dave”. Yeah, I figured while I was out getting Nick they might just tack me onto the prank. I tell him we’ve got birthday cake. Then Nick says something which I find strange: “You knew about the cake?” I’m thinking “YOU knew about the cake?”, as Mike tells us that BOTH of us were the subject of this prank — there was a separate gmail thread that included Nick but not me. Both of us were fully aware of what was going to happen today, and thought the other one was in the dark. At the T station, while I thought I was stalling Nick for time, he thought he was stalling me for time.
Mike and Nick and I walk into the kitchen to have our cake, and find the rest of the game day group standing around the kitchen table, dressed in black. The cakes on the table have three graham-cracker tombstones with “R.I.P.” on each written in black frosting. Matt hands each of us a rose, and the group tells us that today is our funeral. Mike’s girlfriend Elaine and my girlfriend Meg exchange sympathy cards saying how sorry each of them is about the other’s loss. I look to Mike, and he just gives me this “I have no idea either, dude” look. As it turns out, there was another super secret gmail thread that neither Mike nor Nick nor I were a part of, where the rest of our circle of friends planned this ultra secret prank on all three of us.
As it turns out, I wasn’t able to complete my prank on Mike for reasons I cannot give out, but there will be other opportunities.
To review: Over the previous few weeks, there were the following gmail conversations going on
A public one announcing the game day for the 31st
One sent to everyone except me about Nick’s birthday party prank
One sent to everyone except Nick about my birthday party prank
One sent to everyone except Nick and me explaining how the prank was going to work on both of us at the same time
One sent to everyone except Mike about my prank on him
One sent to everyone except Mike, Nick and me about the super secret funeral prank
[...] This year, I decided to get in the spirit and make up for past years by pulling something a little elaborate. But Dave probably tells it best. [...]