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Doug Clark: More like April ‘no fooling allowed’ Day

April Fools’ Day comes Wednesday, of course, which triggers the following thought:

What’s happened to this once-jolly holiday and to practical jokes in general?

Does anyone pull pranks anymore?

I’d like to know. Hey, I’m even willing to help a prankster if you call me.

Won’t be holding my breath, though.

Seems like the entire country has turned into a dour, constipated place where everybody’s thin-skinned and has a lawyer on speed dial.

Are terrorists to blame? Or maybe it’s from all those TV commercials about catheters?

It wasn’t always that way.

There was a time when a good American prank – meaning the kind where nobody gets launched into space or sent to an emergency room – was cause for laughs, celebration and joyous retelling.

Take the stunt from my college days when I shared an apartment with a peculiarity.

The phone number we wound up with (this was back in the land-line days) was one digit off from the same number for a local burger joint with a campus delivery service.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, um, I’d, um, like a double cheeseburger with, um …”

“Sorry, man. Wrong number.”

I don’t recall how many confused callers I corrected before the diabolical jokester who lurks inside me began to whisper …

“Whataya doing, you sap? You’re missing a rare opportunity.”

So I waited for the next wrong number – and plotted. When the call finally came, I did NOT do the right thing.

No, I took the order, which turned out to be a rather big one.

Burgers. Fries. Soft drinks. Milkshakes …

It was obvious that this was for five or maybe six hungry students.

“OK, man,” I said, after jotting down the pertinent name, number and dorm location. “Be there in a half-hour.”

College kids are generally slobs. Meaning I had plenty of rancid garbage on hand to wrap into burger-like shapes with aluminum foil.

One by one, cute bundles of eggshells, moldy pizza and used Q-tips began to fill two large paper bags.

My pal, Jim (who would go on to an important career in the U.S. Navy), agreed to play the part of delivery geek.

So we drove to the dorm. I parked in front and kept the motor running like the getaway driver for a bank heist. Jim carried the sacks inside.

Through the glass entrance, I watched Jim pick up the lobby phone. A minute or so later, at least three big lugs lumbered out of the elevator.

I saw Jim talking animatedly as he handed the bags over. The customers were nothing but smiles as they walked back into the elevator and the doors slowly closed.

Jim took off like an Olympic sprinter.

Just as he cleared the entrance, our customers – now a seething lynch mob – managed to claw open the elevator doors and charged like the Sioux after Custer.

Jim was too quick. He threw himself into the back seat and, laughing like hyenas, we fishtailed away into the night.

“Why were they so happy?” I managed to croak when I could finally talk.

Jim told them they had won a prize and “didn’t have to pay.”

See? Now that’s a good prank.

At least it was.

Pull that same stunt today? We’d both be expelled, for starters.

Once the feds subpoenaed our phone records, I’d be charged with committing wire fraud while Jim would face charges for carrying hazardous waste into a public facility.

It’s the same sad story for all of my greatest pranks.

THEN – Once at a small newspaper, I hid under a table inside the empty darkroom and waited patiently until my friend, who was the photo tech, arrived and turned off the lights.

Then I made grisly growling noises, which sent my friend screaming out into the newsroom, yelling, “Clark, you ($%^#)!!”

NOW – After being fired in a public ceremony, I’d be sued for creating a hostile work environment without a license.

A few days later a restraining order would arrive in the mail, forbidding me from “coming within 50 feet of a darkroom or ever growling again.”

THEN – I once snuck into my best pal Hoover’s apartment and put a fist-size tarantula on his kitchen table. Then I covered the creepy crawly with one of his favorite coffee mugs.

Last, I put a little sign on the mug that read, “Thinking of You!”

Don’t think I’m irresponsible. The people at the pet store assured me that the tarantula, later named “Wooly Bully” in a reader contest, was NOT the biting kind.

NOW – After being picketed by PETA (“People for the Ethical Treatment of Arachnids”), I would be arrested and charged with breaking and entering and “assault with the intent to evoke cardiac arrest.”

OK. I’m a sick puppy. I’ll admit it.

Just tell me that April Fools’ Day isn’t dead, that there are still some crazy pranksters out there who know how to pull a gag or maybe your leg.

Doug Clark can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or dougc@spokesman.com.

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