When April Fool's Fish Attack!

I'm not usually much for April Fool's Day -- by which I mean I don't usually try to trick anyone. (Then again, take a look at Gapers' Block today.) In sixth grade, though, I got someone good ...sort of.

My dad was always traveling the globe when I was growing up, setting up PR operations for the company he worked for. Although this meant we didn't see him for weeks at a time, he made up for it by bringing my brother and I all sorts of interesting souvenirs. Ever have an armadillo ukulele? I did.

When Dad came back from Brazil, Pete and I got piranas -- taxidermed (taxidermied?) or otherwise preserved, that is, lacquered and mounted on a spindle. As creepy as that might sound, it was the perfect gift for two little boys -- we loved'em, with all those white, triangular teeth jutting out of their half-open mouths. They were pretty good sized, probably 10 inches long.

We quickly discovered that the fish could be removed from their spindles. This came in handy when we wished to chase our friends around with a pirana without a block of wood attached to the bottom, and it gave me a great idea in 1986 when April 1 rolled around.

See, the year before, in my French exchange program, we learned that in France, the traditional April Fool's joke was to put a fish on someone's chair or back. (Originally it was a real fish, but nowadays it's just paper.) Hey, I thought, I could do that with the pirana!

So, in class on April Fool's Day, while everyone else busy telling tall tales and slipping whoopie cushions onto each other's seats, I snuck over to the desk of Erin, the girl I liked. (Why is it we always pick on the people we like at that age?) Our desks were the type with a top that lifted up to reveal a compartment for books and pencils and stuff -- the perfect place to hide a flesh-eating fish.

The teacher settled us down and we got to work. Eventually he asked us to get a book out, and suddenly a blood-curdling scream rose up from across the room: my April Fool's prank had gone off! Erin, the girl I liked, was freaking out at her desk, and the teacher ran over to see what was wrong. He pulled out the pirana.

Instead of everyone laughing, though, my teacher was looking stern, while everyone else looked shocked and confused; most of the girls also looked a little scared. The teacher asked who did it, and I raised my hand. He gave me back the pirana and gave me a serious lecture for disrupting class. I don't think I got a detention -- it was April Fool's Day, after all -- but I certainly didn't endear myself to Erin. I was a big enough dork as it was, but now I also had a mean streak in her eyes.

Posted by Andrew Huff at April 1, 2004 08:20 AM