The stay-at-home dad: Young pranksters go full throttle on April Fools’ Day

As part-time Press writer April Fuhl demonstrates every year, you can’t trust anything on April 1.

While dubious news can be somewhat expected from certain media outlets, plenty of reputable sources use April Fools’ Day to rile the masses into a frenzy. I usually avoid the internet on that particular day, just so I don’t get bombarded by lame fake stories.

My four kids don’t lie well enough to trick me with the words (yet). As a rule, I don’t believe anything outlandish they say until proven otherwise.

At the same time, my words can't fool them either. I say so many crazy things on a daily basis that all of them can now proudly unleash a perfectly-timed eye roll almost every time I open my mouth. The first time I told them I had some ridiculous nickname back in college, they believed me. But now, after claiming to be nicknamed, “Cool Guy,” “John Stamos,” “Ace,” “Broccoli Rob,” and many others, my kids know that stories from my younger days are never to be trusted (and that at least half of them reference “The Office”).

So the kids opted for pranks this April 1, and I’ll give them credit for three of the four planned attacks. Nobody bats a thousand, so that’s a Hall of Fame level rate in my estimation.

To start, I didn’t see much of my kids that afternoon. They huddled in their bedroom for long stretches of time, popping out for a bathroom break or to eventually eat dinner. They smirked and giggled every time I made contact with one of them. Our 4-year-old son, however, couldn’t quite contain the radio silence.

“We’re NOT planning pranks,” he said, giggling.

My wife and I knew this prank storm was coming, as our 8-year-old son spent multiple evenings the prior week reading and taking notes in a joke/prank book he received from Christmas. I’m just happy he’s reading something, so I guess I can tolerate some mild damage to the home.

The first prank, in my opinion, missed the mark. When my wife reached for the living room TV remote, she noticed it felt lighter than usual. Before pushing the power button, she popped open the back and noticed the absence of batteries. No problem. We’ve got piles of batteries stashed away in various places (because we kept forgetting to cancel the “Subscribe and Save” on Amazon every month for a year).

For some reason, my wife offered them a tip for a future prank: “Next time, leave the batteries in and just reverse them.” Don’t give them ideas!

Prank No. 2 was gross but terrific, minus the unusual prompt from my 4-year-old to check out the bathroom.

“Dad, you need to go poop? You should go look in the bathroom!” he said, cackling.

I walked into my bathroom to find a pile of some brown, lumpy substance sitting on the lid of the toilet. The four kids burst into laughter. I played along to sell the bit, assuming that it wasn’t actually… well, you know.

“Oh no! Somebody forgot to open the lid before pooping!” I yelled, and the kids fell to the floor.

Don’t worry. It was just a pile of refried beans. Still pretty gross.

Prank No. 3 took quite a bit of work on their part, though, again, they couldn’t resist tipping their hand.

After they all disappeared for several more minutes, my 6-year-old daughter came to ask us if one of us needed to take a shower.

After saying no, she responded, “I think you should take a nice shower tonight. You really need one.”

While probably true, I understood that this diss on my hygiene only served as a prompt to get me back to the bathroom. I pulled open the shower curtain to find all our soap, shampoo and conditioner bottles to be covered with aluminum foil and masking tape.

The kids burst into laughter again. “Oh no, how are you going to take a shower without any SOAP!?!”

It was actually pretty difficult to remove all the tape and foil from the bottles. And now we’re totally out of aluminum foil.

The fourth prank was the most diabolical, because, honestly, I still don’t know for sure if it was a prank. After the kids went to bed, I discovered that our bathroom needed more toilet paper.

That’s odd, I thought. I just put several rolls under the sink.

So I went to the other bathroom on the main floor (the one the kids use) and checked under the sink in there. No toilet paper.

I definitely put six rolls under that sink, I thought.

I checked the downstairs bathroom. No toilet paper either.

I suspect the children hid all the toilet paper, which is downright diabolical. When you gotta go, you gotta go, and in this moment… you get it.

Luckily, I keep a healthy stash of toilet paper in a box in the garage, and the kids are too afraid to go into the garage by themselves at night. HA! Take that, cowards!

Anyway, after thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure they moved any toilet paper. We as a family go through a lot of TP, and I’m pretty forgetful when it comes to keeping every bathroom well-stocked. For their part, all four kids seemed confused when I asked them about it the next day.

Either I’m becoming more forgetful by the day, or my kids have finally figured out how to effectively lie straight to my face. I’m in trouble either way.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 4-10. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.