April Fools’ Day · 1 April 2023
Today is April Fools’ Day (unless you are reading this early), and it is fun to reminisce about April Fools’ Days of yore.
When we were kids, we used to pull practical jokes on each other on April Fools’ Day. Nothing big. Just tell somebody to look over there and steal a French fry. Or pour cold water over the shower curtain when somebody is taking a shower. (Okay. That was as a bigger kid.) But at our house, the favorite joke was one that our dad taught us. Water over the door.
Our dad was not necessarily a jokester. Oh sure, he liked to talk big. He liked to tell jokes and stories. But I am not sure that all of his tall tales were true. Most of them probably were, because truth is often stranger than fiction. But while he might have done a few crazy things, I do not think he was that much of a prankster. Still, he did teach us our favorite April Fools’ trick.
The water over the door trick is a way to douse somebody walking through a doorway. Usually the bathroom. After all, that is the place with an easy source of water. The only thing you need is a plastic cup to put the water in. Oh. And some balance. All you need to do is to balance the cup of water on the top of the door and when somebody goes in, Splash! That somebody gets wet. Easy.
Okay, usually the only thing that got wet was the floor, but it was humorous gold when somebody actually got soaked.
The funny thing is that when you play this joke on somebody when you are a kid, things tend not to go so well. First of all, most eight year olds cannot reach to the top of the door. So stools and chairs are necessary to set up the trick. And since your brother is the one you want to get, you need to get up earlier than him so you can get him rushing into the bathroom in the morning. Plus, he is probably wary because you spent so much time with him trying to perfect the trick days before April Fools’ Day.
One of the things that we learned working on perfecting the water over the door trick was that you cannot use too much water. At least not if you want to lean the cup against the wall so that the cup falls no matter how the door is opened. You see, we found that if you just put the cup of water on top of the door, you could open the door really slowly and it would not fall. So we figured we had to lean the cup a little. Which is where the balance came in. And since you did not want to wait in the bathroom until somebody came in, you had to do that balancing act outside the bathroom. That balancing of the cup of water standing on your tiptoes on the chair led to many a time being soaked as the prankster. Many a time. Either that or having to clean up the water for the fifth time because it just would not stay balanced.
Well, I do not expect to get doused by ice water over the shower door or even a cup of water from over the door this April Fools’ Day. Those days are long gone. But it is still fun to reminisce about April Fools’ Days of yore.
© 2023 Michael T. Miyoshi
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