You don’t see too many good April Fool’s pranks. You really need good timing, the right people and a believable story line to pull it off. My sophomore or junior year of college, everything came together perfectly.

A little background – my fraternity had a bad reputation. We weren’t that bad, but we skirted the rules without putting pledges in serious danger. One of the pledge responsibilities was to wait tables during lunch and dinner. One time, however, the foursome waiting tables were taken outside and handcuffed to the fire escape. Don’t ask me why – I don’t even know if I was there when it happened. No one was hurt. It was all just the product of a brother or brothers who were bored and had access to handcuffs.

Again, don’t ask me why.

That took place a few days before April Fool’s Day. We must have just returned from Spring Break because we were on trimesters and the break between second and third term was usually from around St. Patrick’s Day to around April Fool’s Day. So I guess the handcuffing was someone getting rid of pent up energy from break.

Anyhow. We had announcements on April Fool’s Day at lunch and the pledges were sent out of the room like they always were for announcements. At some point – I don’t remember whether it was right away or after the mundane announcements – our president stood up.

Here’s where having the right people is important. He was a pretty serious guy, but he looked really pissed when he stood up. He demanded that the guys behind the handcuffing take credit for it because he spent the whole morning in the Dean of Students’ office, and we were in deep trouble.

That was believable. We were always teetering on the edge of being in trouble, mainly because we did things like that – something that sounded horrible, but in reality was just a prank. He sold it perfectly.

Here’s where the other “right person” came into play. Except he wasn’t in on the prank – he took the bait perfectly. He was the pledgemaster, who was in charge of all the pledges and pretty much responsible for things regardless of who did them. He was kind of high-strung and took things way too seriously at times. As the president went on about responsibility and not getting others in trouble (PA had some pretty serious anti-hazing laws we were always threatened with), the pledge master stood up.

In tears, he demanded that the people who did it take responsibility because he wasn’t going to get in trouble for something he didn’t have anything to do with. He had a high-pitched voice so that made this even funnier. Admittedly, he might not have been actually crying, but it makes the story better.

Things got real quiet for a minute before the president spoke again. He sheepishly looked around the room at the stunned faces and said, “April Fool’s.” At this point, we attacked him, stripped him naked and threw him in the pond next door.

Again, don’t ask me why.