pril Fool's Day is a day I always have great plans for. Sometimes I get to follow through on them. Sometimes I don't. This is the story of the best April Fool's prank I didn't get to play.
I have a good friend Mike who lives out in California. Back in college during freshmen year, Mike lived in the same dorm as I did. Now, Mike's a great guy and a hell of a lot of fun but that term "he's such a boy scout" definitely applies to him. Through most of college, Mike spent his summer's working at boy scout camp and he had a group of friends that worked there during the summers with him. A number of these guys he worked with every summer also went to college together at NC State University and shared and apartment. Let's call them Tom, Jerry and company.
Tom, Jerry, and company were all good guys. Hell, they spent summers working at a boy scout camp and Tom was even in the national guard. But, these guys had a wicked sense of humor. One day when they were bored, they created a fictional roommate and named him Hugh G. Reccione. Say it out loud. Yup, their fictional roommate was named huge erection.Then, Tom, Jerry, and company proceeded to create a paper trail for Hugh. They got magazine subscriptions in Hugh's name. They signed him up for all kinds of mailing lists. It got to the point where Hugh was getting all kinds of junk mail...sales fliers, political mailings, even credit card offers. They even managed to get him a social security card.
Well, just link boredom create Hugh, boredom and the upcoming April Fool's Day got Mike and I thinking. Mike wanted to get them back because they had signed him up for the Lego Club (or maybe it was the Burger King birthday club). So, I put on my thinking cap and had a stroke of brilliance. It dawned on me that with the paper trail Tom, Jerry, and company had created for the fictional Hugh G. Reccione, he was over the age of 18 and could potentially get entered in a government data base. Also, I was in ROTC in college so I had access to a full military uniform. This was perfect for a set up!
I can hear y'all asking, "What the hell does a military uniform have to do with anything?" Well, if Hugh was over 18 and in the government data base, he should have registered with Selective Service...the group responsible for implementing a draft if ever our country needs one. And, if a group of people were hiding someone who hadn't registered with Selective Service, they could theoretically get in a ton of trouble. And, who would likely be sent out to check on something like that...maybe someone in military uniform.
So, the plan was to get enough ribbons and maybe some higher rank insignia to add to my ROTC uniform...make it look like the uniform of an active duty member. Then, I was going to show up at Tom, Jerry, Hugh, and companies apartment in uniform and demand to see Mr. Reccione as he was in violation of federal statute because he hadn't registered with Selective Service. Tom would have shit a brick because, as a member of the National Guard, he would have been terrified of getting in trouble for harboring someone who hadn't registered and, when the truth came out, for committing fraud by setting up a fictional Social Security account. We would have let this play out for a good part of the month. There would have been official looking letters and maybe even follow up visits in attempt to contact Mr. Reccione. It would have been so much fun watching Tom, Jerry, and company scramble and freak out...almost as much fun as seeing their reaction when Mike and I confessed.
But, I admit it. I chickened out. I was only 18, I was in ROTC, and I was afraid I would get in trouble for impersonating an officer. It pretty much amounts to the fact that I didn't have the balls to follow through. I'd like to think I'd have the nerve to pull something like that off today.
Tell me about the best April Fool's prank you've ever come up with and let me know if you managed to pull it off.