What's a great April Fool's Day prank?

March 31, 2006 4:15 PM

What's a great April Fool's Day prank my 5-year-old daughter and I can play on her Mom (my wife) tomorrow? Nothing too devious or disturbing, please.

There have, of course, been more general AskMe's about AFD, but I'm specifically looking for a trick my 5-year-old can participate in and enjoy.

posted by Rock Steady to human relations (30 comments total)

Put tissue paper in the victim's shoes, so that when they put them on in the morning, their feet don't fit. It's very confusing for about 30 seconds or so, and quite amusing to watch!
posted by Orange Goblin at 4:26 PM on March 31, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

That's a good one.

Is putting a rubber band around the sprayer handle in the sink too devious?
posted by rafter at 4:33 PM on March 31, 2006

Some food pranks, involving food made to taste look like other food, including a sundae made to look like a fried egg.
posted by Airhen at 4:37 PM on March 31, 2006

This will only work if you have a special dish-sprayer attachment alongside the faucet in a modern kitchen sink. Make sure that the attachment is facing towards the potential user and discover the best method of keeping it locked in the “on” position (rubber band works great for me). Watch as the unsuspecting victim gets a brief though startling surprise shower. This is harmless, unless the unsuspecting party is allergic to water.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 4:42 PM on March 31, 2006

or you could do it rafter's way
posted by |n$eCur3 at 4:43 PM on March 31, 2006

Clip on nosering for the five-year-old!
posted by headspace at 4:57 PM on March 31, 2006

If you have a cat, buy a new kitty litter tray and fill it with grapenuts and tootsie rolls. Have your daughter eat some when mom's looking.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:22 PM on March 31, 2006

cool aid package in the shower head! red would be the coolest but i guess any color would work!
posted by crewshell at 5:40 PM on March 31, 2006

Great comment, SC, and eponysterical too!
posted by rob511 at 5:41 PM on March 31, 2006

even better, deep shit cookies.
posted by zadcat at 5:42 PM on March 31, 2006

When you wake up in the morning, have your daughter complain that something smells funny. Then have her go to her mother and complain that something smells really bad, all the while smelling around your wife. Keep this up for an hour, and with a straight face. Then complain about the funky smell... and keep it going for a bit.

It will drive her crazy....

April Fool's!
posted by Benway at 5:58 PM on March 31, 2006

Vasoline on door handles, saran on toilet (under the seat). If you really want to be gross, add dries prunes to the toilet. Set all clocks to different times. This works really well when 4/1 is on a weekday!!! Alarms all go off at different times- it is a hoot! Tell your husband, kids, etc. you are pregnant (that worked for me for 20 years).
If you have a water cup in your bathroom, fill it all the way up with water. When someone comes in to take a drink, they douse themselves with water. They think it is empty.
Watch and enjoy!
posted by susanann at 6:14 PM on March 31, 2006

When I was a kid, the best trick I ever pulled on my parents was the traditional swap of the sugar and salt. I was careful not to waste any of either -- which is why they ultimately weren't too upset -- but it was the perfect joke while it lasted. My dad, who takes a ton of sugar in his coffee, was writing notes to my mom: Honey, I think the coffee's gone really bad, could you get new? And my mom, who takes no sugar in hers, thought he'd gone off the deep end. I was about seven, and it was a wonderful, wonderful time.

Since you're in on it, you can easily pull it off at least as well ("What do you mean, honey? It tastes fine to me."). Of course, it won't work if your wife drinks her coffee black.
posted by booksandlibretti at 6:22 PM on March 31, 2006

My son once tricked me with this:
He showed me a game where you stick a funnel in the waist of your pants and then look up and balance a coin on your nose, You then try to tip your head down and drop the coin into the funnel. He did this a few times and then asked if I wanted to try. I said ok, got all set up, and then, while I was standing there looking at the ceiling waiting for him to tell me to drop the coin,he poured a up of water into the funnel. He completely skunked me. I had no idea it was a trick until I felt the shock of cold water running down my legs.
posted by Biblio at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Kool-aid in the shower head is always good.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2006

While it's still dark, one person rouses the sleeping victim to partial wakeness then shouts "Look out for that car!" while the other person runs at them with 2 flashlights.
posted by 445supermag at 6:42 PM on March 31, 2006

Biblio, that was hilarious.
posted by apple scruff at 6:50 PM on March 31, 2006

One of my friends from college reports telling this joke to his dad when he was fairly young:
"Hey Dad! How do you keep a schmuck in suspense?"
"I don't know. How?"
"Tell ya tomorrow."

Clearly you'll want to pick a better word than schmuck.

When I was in grade school, my mom always seemed to be on the phone for the longest time, so I wrote up a note that said, "I have to throw up" and ran up to her with my cheeks puffed out , looking ill and handed her the note while she was on the phone. She flipped (predictably) as I fake hurled/burst out laughing.
posted by plinth at 7:06 PM on March 31, 2006

This one is a little involved, and it's probably too late now to do it, but you might want to try it next year or something.

My dad is a lab chemist/technologist and liked to play with mild explosives of the harmless variety when I was a kid. So for April Fools one year when I was twelve, we made Ammonium Triiodide and before the residue finished drying we painted VERY VERY SMALL drops of it onto every light switch, oven switch, and basically every frequent contact surface in the house late at night on 3/31 after my mother went to sleep.

The next morning every single time someone turned on a light switch or set the oven timer a small firecracker-like *BANG* sounded.

I'd like to cap by saying that my mother never forgave us, but the truth is she was pretty used to him by that point.
posted by Ryvar at 7:17 PM on March 31, 2006

A favorite I've done in the office...

If you subscribe to a newspaper get an extra on 4/1/06 then save it for a year and switch it out on 4/1/07.

(Won't work if one is a Sunday.)
posted by UncleHornHead at 7:19 PM on March 31, 2006

Oh, and yes, you can get hurt and blow your fingers off if you're an idiot and use too much, blah blah blah I am not responsible and let the prankster beware, etc. Try whipping up a couple batches and detonating them with a stick first to get a feel for the stuff.
posted by Ryvar at 7:24 PM on March 31, 2006

VERY small drops.
posted by Ryvar at 7:40 PM on March 31, 2006

A modest thing, but I made Ken a lovely pot of coffee one April Fool's. With about an ounce of soy sauce in it. The delicious part was sitting there reading the paper for five minutes before he took the first sip. Mmm, mmm, good to the last drop. I live in fear of the year of revenge.
posted by Nelson at 8:47 PM on March 31, 2006

Stay Free! magazine's latest issue is all about pranks, in tribute to the recently-departed father of one of the principals.
posted by intermod at 9:19 PM on March 31, 2006

Once, as a young child of about 5 or so, I pulled a prank on my mother. I took some toilet paper, clean of course, and dyed it with drops of food coloring. After it dried, I wadded it into my mouth. After a bit of set up, "Mom, I'm not feeling very well", I faked starting to barf. I then brought my hands up as if to cover my mouth and then pulled the toilet paper out quickly. The trick is in the selling of it, but it worked rather well for a few seconds anyway. She was quite relieved that it was fake and thought it was pretty funny. YMMV.
posted by tbird at 12:48 AM on April 1, 2006

The key here is "ridiculous but believable".

I fooled my dad this year by telling him I was offered an UN internship. He's usually a skeptic but he's amazingly gulliable on April Fools.

Maybe you can tell your wife that your daughter has been eligible for some random award, Genius 5-Year-Old or something, and there'll be media/award people/etc coming very soon. Lead her on for a while. ;)
posted by divabat at 6:28 AM on April 1, 2006

I'll second ryvar on the ammonium triiodide. I used to get empty gel caps from the pharmacy, fill each end with dry tapioca and put a smidge of the compound in the middle & then press them together & store in cotton. They were great, like more powerful versions of the "popper rocks" that you throw down & they snap.

If you take the stuff when wet and paint a like bit into the keyhoes of doorlocks, much fun will then ensue.

Not sure how easy it is to get solid iodine from the pharmacy these days - seems like I readit's an ingredient in meth manufacture?
posted by Pressed Rat at 6:45 AM on April 1, 2006

Thanks all. I like the funnel-coin game and the last-year's-news a lot, but I went with the rubber band on the sink sprayer. Here's the thing though... It worked perfectly, but my wife was not standing directly in front of the sprayer, so while she got a good blast, so did my daughter, who was standing behind her to get a good look! I guess it taught her a good lesson about the risk of having a prank backfire on the pranker!
posted by Rock Steady at 6:45 AM on April 1, 2006

While it's still dark, one person rouses the sleeping victim to partial wakeness then shouts "Look out for that car!" while the other person runs at them with 2 flashlights.

That reaches a level of psyops that reminds me of this prank:

I overheard this story in typing class, in high school--
One time these guys in high school challenged a kid who was inordinately proud of his junker car to a race down a large hill. At the bottom of the hill a friend had made a small dummy of a child and taped the feet to the wheels of a big wheel, and attached a rope to the handlebars.

When the principals came racing down the hill, the sidekick pulled the big wheel out from behind a parked car. Because the "feet" were duct taped to the pedals, it looked like the dummy was pedaling into the road.

According to the perpetrators, it took a little while for the driver to quit screaming.

I think every driver's education teacher should do something similar.
posted by craniac at 7:40 AM on April 1, 2006

the sidekick pulled the big wheel out from behind a parked car

Making someone believe they've killed someone else (or won the lottery) when they haven't is so not okay. For one thing, what was to keep the guy from swerving/crashing?
posted by scarabic at 5:17 PM on April 5, 2006