“Daddy, I’m pregnant.” At least that’s the prank that senior Akira Robinson pulled on her father one April Fools’ day. “He wasn’t too happy about that one,” she said with a smile.
Pulling pranks on April Fools’ day has been a long standing tradition, and many UT students had stories of their own to share.
Obviously, there were more than a handful of stories offered about feigned pregnancies. “A buddy of mine one year put a sonogram as his Facebook default picture. Everybody was congratulating him all day,” said junior Dante Spinnato.
Pulling pranks on parents was another fun topic for students. “The only prank I ever played was on my mom when I was really little,” said Sophomore Meghan Miller.
“This one time she got a Dunkin’ Donuts souvenir mug with Pepsi in it. My mom left for a while and while she was gone I mixed flour in her drink. She knew something was up but she still drank it.”
Senior Andy Lopes took pranking his mother to the next level when he was in middle school.
“My mom worked nights and slept days. One April Fools’ Day, when she was asleep, I threw my backpack from the top of the stairs. It made the most awful sound and woke her up,” he said. “I laid at the bottom of the stairs and put my leg at an odd angle and it really freaked her out.”
There were also stories of when parents turned the tables on their kids. “Every time an April Fools’ Day came up, they’d trick me with something serious. My dad told me one year my mom died. I was crying and he just goes ‘April Fool’s.’ It was awful,” said freshman Zachary Green.
Sophomore Jen Fink recalled a parental-prank also. “My mom told me I could get a dog. We went to the store and everything and then she was like ‘April Fools’!’”
Janeesha Youmans remembered a time when a professor pranked a class. “My professor told us that we had a 20 page paper due in less than a week,” the sophomore said.
Some people’s April Fools’ pranks bring on showers of unexpected retaliation. “One of my friend’s brothers made me chocolate milk and put glue in it,” said freshman Jared Lichtenstaredter.
“So my friend and I peed in a bucket and balanced it on a door so it would fall on him.”
For students living in dorms, April Fools’ Day is a prime opportunity to prank roommates and suite-mates.
“My suite-mates last year Saran-wrapped our fridge shut, so when we went to get drinks out at night, it took us extra long,” said Sophomore Liz Edgerton. “They even put icy hot on our deodorant,” she added.
Senior Dan Minkow proudly recalls the prank that he and his roommate pulled on classmates Matt Thomas and Chris Baietto last year. They went into their friends’ room and stole their 50 inch plasma and brought it downstairs to their room and kept it overnight.
Baietto jumped in, “I told him that our TV had gone missing and that we’d called security. Security had contacted the police who came and reviewed the tapes from the hallways and elevators and knew who took the TV.”
Thomas took the story from there: “Dan told us that he’d taken the TV, so I decided to bring it back myself. I ended up carrying it back in the hallway through the elevator, and, of course, there are cameras everywhere.”
“The cops still came to our room and showed a picture of me and my roommate moving the TV,” Minkow continued. “We tried to explain that it was a prank, but they weren’t too happy about it.”
“The cops came to my room too,” Thomas said. “They saw we had the TV back so we have to lie and say that we just woke up in the morning and found it there, that someone had just brought it back.
“They end up showing a picture of me carrying my TV back to my room myself.”
Minkow, Baietto and Thomas broke into laughter recalling the story and admitted that pranks can sometimes get out of hand. It’s never good to have the police involved.
Senior Tyler LoPilato had a frightening experience when a couple of friends visited him his sophomore year.
“We were hanging out in Stadium and they told me they were going to sit outside for a while.
“About five minutes later I got a call from the security guard downstairs telling me that she caught my friends with cocaine,” said LoPilato.
“I went downstairs and they had their hands behind their back. The security guard told me that Tampa Police was on their way and that my friends told her I sold the coke to them. I was s——- my pants. We were about to go upstairs to do a room search when they all yelled, ‘April Fools’!’”
Maybe this year will offer even more stories of pranks on friends and parents and the occasional prank that goes wrong.
Shivani Kanji also contributed to this article.
Channing Hailey can be reached at channing.hailey@spartans.ut.edu.
The easiest prank is to look at the victim, snicker, sheepishly snicker, and whisper. They would be like, “what’s wrong??” but just keep giggling while they check themselves, then yell, APRIL FOOLS!!!!!!!!!!!