Written by Judith Blakley
After reading a friend's humor article, I found myself reflecting on the time that my adult daughter attempted to place two Kool-Aid packages on layaway at our local Walmart. An odd sense of pride welled up inside me and I began to reflect on how she came to become the type of person who would play such a practical joke.
I have come to the conclusion that practical jokesters run in families. My daughter learned from me; I learned from my father. I never knew my paternal grandfather, but I assume that must be where my father and his siblings learned this behavior.
When I was growing up, I observed the adults in my life attempting to one-up each other all the time. My parents and their friends ran a stock car racetrack and this is where I spent a lot of time growing up. The group at the racetrack was one big family and you could always find someone setting up a practical joke. The ones I remember the most involve “horse biscuits” and “Crisco ice cream.” Disgusting, yes, but very memorable.
My favorite uncle was visiting and he could not wait to stir up some trouble. Uncle Homer called my mom’s friend pretending to be a DJ from a local country music radio station. He said that she would win the prize if she answered one quick question. “What was Roy Rodger’s horse’s name?” asked Uncle Homer. Carol screamed “Trigger” so loudly that we could all hear her over the phone. Without missing a beat, and in a completely calm, sincere voice, Uncle Homer told her that she had just won a basket of piping hot horse biscuits to be delivered to her door first thing in the morning. He thanked her and hung up. Carol immediately called back and demanded to know if this was the week that my father’s brother was visiting! Take into consideration that this was long before “*69” and Call Waiting. Carol just happened to guess correctly that it had been my Uncle up to no good. The next morning, Carol and her husband awoke to the sound of their doorbell going off and a beautiful basket of horse biscuits on their doorstep. Horse biscuits became the "in" thing at the track. Everyone had a basket delivered to their home.
After several weeks of everyone at the racetrack playing practical jokes on everyone else, my mother decided it was time to get even with a few people, mainly the men. She delivered banana splits to all the guys at the track. The men were raving over how delicious those banana splits were until she told them what they were eating. She rolled scoops of Crisco shortening in vanilla ice cream and froze them to keep their shape. She used those Crisco ice cream balls to make her banana splits. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever witnessed anyone eating until Fear Factor hit TV.
Of course, my dad played practical jokes on his children too. The one I remember most is when he told us that he was giving each of us a two piece luggage set for Christmas. He was notorious for giving us early Christmas gifts and for hinting towards what my mother did not want us to know was under the tree. We were very excited, so he told us that one set was green and one set was white. My sister and I started fighting over who was going to get the white set. I insisted that since I was the oldest, that I should get my pick. My dad let us fight for a few minutes before he told us that the green set was twice as big as the white set. That settled things. I was the oldest, so I should get the bigger set. My dad sent my mom to retrieve our luggage and she came back into the room with two sets of trash bags. One set was green lawn and leaf bags, and the others were white tall kitchen bags.
My poor husband hates April Fools Day. It is my favorite day of the year. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot avoid falling for one of my practical jokes. I have become an expert at pulling off the ultimate practical joke.
My children’s favorite is when I faked my arrest, but my favorite is the one where I faked the car’s engine blowup. We had a van that slowly leaked oil, and my husband kept bugging me about checking the oil until we could get it fixed. I knew he was obsessed with the oil problem, so I did not feel it was necessary for me to be obsessed with it to. I never checked the oil. This only made him bug me more. I decided to fix the problem. I went to my favorite mechanic and they wrote up a fake estimate of repair for an engine replacement because I had let the oil run out and the engine blew up. They wrote some smart remarks on the estimate too. We decided it would be best if it cost as much as possible. They wrote as much labor into the project as they could get away with and still make it look believable. I parked the van behind my neighbor’s house and waiting for my husband to get home. He took the news well and even suggested that it would be wiser to just buy another car than to repair that one. In order to force him to drive over to the shop, I left something important in the van. The only problem was that I couldn’t hold it in and ended up spilling the truth when we were halfway there. Ah, the memories.
Needless to say, when my daughter told her story of how she tried to put Kool-Aid on layaway, I was very proud.
