One particular afternoon, my brother and I ~ ages around 7 and 6 ~ were in the living room watching TV when we heard our dad yelling from somewhere near the front of the house.
“Who’s supposed to clean up after these damn dogs?”
My brother and I to this day have never learned to work together well. As kids, teamwork was out of the question and we had taken to trading off on this nasty little job. We started that back and forth, tennis match thing with our heads, trying to remember whose turn it was to clean up whatever one of our tiny doxie darlings had deposited on the floor.
The old man was still bellowing, so he and I took off running.
There Dad was, all 6’2” of the old man, standing splayed legs, hands on his hips, straddling a little doxie turd lying all alone on the hallway floor.
“I said, ‘who’s gonna clean this up’?”
My brother and I started the tennis match head sweep again and must have taken a little too long to own up to doody duty.
What happened next is still indelibly imprinted in my brain. My dad, my father, reached down, and bare-handed picked up that dog turd… then popped it into his mouth and began to chew.
It became deathly quiet, and I don’t think either my brother or I were able to keep our gaping mouths closed. I just knew that for my dad to do that, he was beyond reasonable mad, he was crazy angry and we were in some seriously deep shit.
Then… my mother began to laugh.
You see, despite the fact that my brother’s birthday is April 1, and his earlier-than-due-date delivery was the source of a running family joke (the grans hung up on our parents when Dad called on April Fool’s Day to tell them they had a new grandson), we are not a family that engages in practical jokes. This prank completely took us by surprise. We never saw it coming.
Dad had taken a Tootsie Roll and shaped it into a perfectly believable dachshund turd. We were totally fooled.
I can laugh now, but at the time it was very traumatic – NOT – it was probably the funniest thing my dad has ever done, ever!*
I would love to hear about the worst April Fool’s joke someone played on you, or the best one you pulled off… so share, come on, you know you want to.
Happy 50th Birthday Brother Dear
Daddy’s candy prank
Tootsie Rolls and doxie turds
Play it on your kids
Haiku Friday is hosted by Lou at LouCeeL.
*originally published 3/31/08 at IMSO
Thin spiral notebook 
We never played practical jokes for April Fool’s Day…but this one was great….and very funny. Your dad is wayyyy cool….
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Ha! I love this. Will definitely have to use this in the future.
I don’t know the best prank pulled, but this morning I woke to my kitchen being void of table, chairs, etc and found them in the back yard – courtesy of my teen.
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That’s awesome! We never did practical jokes either. I remember once my mom telling me not to move, that I had a bug coming out of my ear. Only joke she ever pulled. Makes it much more believable if you don’t know it’s coming!
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HILARIOUS! I’m going to file this one away as “prank to pull some day.”
I never have really had a major April Fool’s Joke played on me. I did, last year, tell a very good natured couple (whom I’ve known for YEARS) that they owed the IRS $5K before revealing they actually had a $6K refund coming back on their return. Luckily, they laughed heartily but made sure to tell me it wasn’t really funny.
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OMG. I seriously threw up in my mouth a little bit until I finished reading. WOW. hahahahha. I can only imagine as a kid what you were thinking! Happy Birthday to your brother!
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I can’t recall a single April Fool’s Day joke played on me, so there must not have been any good ones. And only one person tried to get me today. I called up our accounting department to tell them to release the loan disbursements today and was asked, “What disbursements? We show no loans disbursing today.” I was momentarily perplexed until it dawned on me what day it was. Yeah… pretty boring joke.
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I have got to pull this one on my daughter!
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That’s hilarious. That’s just SO COOL.
Oh. And today is my #2 Son’s (and his Bride’s) fifth wedding anniversary. I still can’t get over the fact that my son got married on April Fool’s Day.
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That is HILARIOUS. I can imagine my dad doing the same thing, since he used to eat Milk Bones to make my friends laugh…
Happy b-day to your brother! 🙂
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Ha! That is good. Your dad and my dad have similar senses of humor. Happy Birthday to your brother and my wife.
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