The Joke's on You. April Fool's!!

Is there anything funnier than a joke that backfires onto the Joker???
Some examples from a little paper down Texas way.

Add your story, we'll all have a good laugh at your expense.

Joe(But I thought...)Nation


By Jeff Salamon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Saturday, April 01, 2006

Is there anything more humiliating ­ and, let's
face it, funnier ­ than a practical joke that backfires on the joker?

Last April Fools' Day, I thought it would be
really funny to devote the entire front page of
the Life & Arts section to an extended gag about
South Austin restaurant Taco X-Press taking over
the Frost Bank Tower building and booting out the various tenants.

Technically, this was a very funny idea. But not
everyone thought so. Though some readers
appreciated our attempt at levity, a few failed
to realize that we were pulling their legs, which
led to results both humorous and sad.

One reader drove all over the abandoned Mueller
Airport site looking for a nonexistent sushi bar.
(Don't ask.) Another left an expletive-laced
voicemail warning me to never again write such
"detrimental" prose. And a University of Texas
journalism professor sent out a mass e-mail
denouncing the gag as "at best, befuddling, and,
at worst, juvenile, confusing and perhaps less than ethical."

My favorite response, though, came from the a
manager at McCormick & Schmick's, the seafood
restaurant located on the first floor of the
Frost building. The guy spent five minutes
screaming at me, accusing me of "(messing) with
my business" and warning me that the Austin
American-Statesman would soon hear from his lawyers.

After he hung up (loudly), I told my boss that we
might be facing a lawsuit. She told me not to get
upset (too late) and asked me to type up a summary of the phone conversation.

A few minutes later, midway through writing the
memo, the phone rang again, and I picked it up.
It was my tormentor from McCormick & Schmick's.
But this time his tone of voice was very different.

"GOTCHA!" he yelled, and started laughing uproariously.

It turns out the folks at the restaurant loved
the piece, as well as the free publicity, and
figured it would be funnier still to turn the tables on me.

Once my heart stopped fibrillating, I had to
agree: It was funny. Sort of. In fact, judging
from all the laughter at my expense, it was a wildly successful practical joke.

Sometimes what really makes a gag funny is when
it doesn't work out as planned. True, it might
take years for the humiliation to morph into
humor. But as these stories from readers show,
there is life after blooper trauma.

Sort of.

That sinking feeling

I was about 9 when my most memorable joke
backfired. Our family of six was on our annual
summer vacation drive to California. Somewhere in
the desert of New Mexico we stopped at an old gas
station to fill up our station wagon. My mom
asked me to take my younger sister, Ginger, to the restroom.

Grudgingly, I walked her in. Ginger entered the
stall and pleaded with me, "Please don't leave me alone in here!"

I giggled. "I'm leaving!" I yelled, opened the
bathroom door and let it slam shut. Then I jumped
up on the sink so that when she looked under the
stall for me she wouldn't see my feet. Was that clever or what?

The sink tore loose from the wall and crashed to
the floor. Water gushed toward the ceiling!
Ginger, dressing as she ran, took off out the
door. I followed her, both of us shrieking!

­Sharon Cozad, Kyle

Waiting for the payoff

The best practical joke I ever pulled nearly got
me fired from the daily newspaper where I worked
in Oklahoma. It was the early 1980s, and the
small, family-owned newspaper had begun an
extensive building renovation. Our managers had
told us that because of this costly project, no
raises could be expected that year, causing much staff grumbling.

Every two weeks, the managing editor took a
morning walk around the newsroom, distributing
our paltry paychecks. Because the police
reporter's shift didn't begin until 3 p.m., the
editor would clip the pay envelope to the police
scanner antennae on the reporter's desk.

So I and one of my buddies, a photographer on the
staff, hatched a plan. We composed a terse note
on company stationery stating, "Starting next pay
period, 10 percent will be cut from all staff
salaries to contribute toward the remodeling
project." I even forged the managing editor's
signature. After slipping this official-looking
letter into the cop reporter's pay envelope, we
clipped it to the antenna and excitedly anticipated his arrival.

Imagine our glee when at 3 p.m. we watched the
unsuspecting reporter walk in and grab his
envelope from the antenna. But instead of opening
it, he slipped it into his hip pocket. We were
devastated. The whole point of the joke was to
see his expression as he read about the salary
cut. We kept watching and hoping, but the
envelope never budged from his pocket. At 5 p.m.
the photographer and I called it a day, leaving our victim to finish his shift.

The next morning, I had barely stepped into the
newsroom when the managing editor shouted for me,
demanding I come to his office. Apparently during
the prior evening, the cop reporter had found the
note and become furious. He called the editor at
home to ask him why his already measly pay was to
be docked for the publisher's pet project.

"Just be glad he called me and not the
publisher," grumbled the editor as he chastised me for the prank.

How he knew I was one of the perpetrators, I'll
never know. Perhaps he could already see what I
hadn't yet realized: I had a crush on the police reporter.

By the way, that reporter not only forgave the
photographer and me for our folly, but he has
also been my husband for the past 17 years.

­Liz Carmack, Austin

All shook up

I come from a family of pranksters.

My sister, Karen, enjoyed wrapping Christmas
presents so that the train set I was expecting to
unwrap in the huge package beneath our tree
magically turned into a cool Mickey Mouse watch,
17 progressively smaller boxes later.

My brother Gary would think nothing of hiding
under my bed, lying perfectly still for half an
hour until he sensed I was just about to fall
asleep. At that point he'd reach up and grab my
wrist, screaming, which added immeasurably to my horror.

My first attempt to join the prankster gang came
one April Fools' Day when I was 10 or 11. I had
surreptitiously loosened the cap on our salt
shaker, imagining the hilarity when one of my
siblings' broccoli was rendered inedible after
the first shake. In my mind, I was also doing the victim a huge favor.

Little did I know that my mother had prepared
steak for dinner and that my short-tempered
father would be the first to take the bait.

I still remember the delicious anticipation of
waiting for one of my brothers or my sister to
grab the salt shaker. Then the horror when my
father's beefy hand reached to the center of the
table and picked it up. I recall the cap falling
onto his steak, followed by a tiny mountain of
salt. (I had envisioned the joke being so much
funnier because I'd filled the shaker full.)

After that, it's all a blank. The traumatic
aftermath of the salt-shaker incident is just one
of the memories I've repressed from a childhood
spent tip-toeing around my father's wrath.

Did I laugh? Did anybody? Was I spanked?
(Likely.) Sent to my room? (Ditto.) It's a good
bet that even if my father's belt didn't come off
­ the usual punishment for such an offense ­ he
let loose with a string of swear words that would
make Darren McGavin's character in "A Christmas Story" sound like an amateur.

It's probably better that I don't remember the
unpleasant details. My siblings hang up on me
when I ask them about it; my mother claims
forgetfulness due to her advancing age.

Some people can't take a joke. And I never pulled
one at the dinner table again.

­Dale Roe, American-Statesman Staff

Teacher to the rescue

This joke backfired on me almost 50 years ago,
but I still remember it vividly, because I was so embarrassed.

When I was in second grade my mom let me buy a
ridiculous little toy camera from a joke catalog.
It didn't really work, but had a little toy mouse
that squeaked and jumped out of the "lens" when
the button was pushed by the "photographer." My
sister and I thought it was hilarious.

I took it to school and told the teacher I wanted
to take a picture of the class with my new
camera. She took the class outside and
painstakingly lined everybody up for a group
photo. When I snapped the button and the mouse
jumped out, I expected the class to double over
in laughter. But they just stood there, dumbfounded.

I felt awful. What was I thinking? I was normally
a quiet, shy girl ­ I don't know what got into me that day.

Finally, the sweet teacher came to my rescue and
said, "Oh well, since we're already outside, let's have an extra recess."

­Peggy Niksich, Livingston