April Fools & The Wingdings Virus

Well, I LOVE April Fool's Day. I have finally convinced my wife to let me prank, lie, disturb, and distress all in the name of April Fool's Day, with no guilt. Next to Christmas, I don't know of a holier day. My girls have gotten very into it. I woke up to a house that reeked of burnt toast. They brought me a charred black piece of toast covered with jelly (to hide the char). Of course I bit into it thanking them over and over for making me breakfast, and then freaked out for them. I LOVE when they're so excited that they can't stop giggling. Later that morning, as I was trying things out on Heather, she went upstairs saying things like, "I swear I hate this day!" As soon as she said this she opened her bedroom door and a pillow fell on her head. Evalee. And she didn't stop all day.

Before I share my greatest prank of the day, here are my 2 personal favorites from the past.

1. Getting my old pastor to believe that one of our church members was picked up for shop lifting (3rd offense) and used his one phone call to call me so I could come to the courthouse and post bail. He totally bought it. With things like this, you must show confindence in your presentation but also have a touch of sympathy for the senior citizen inmate's wife, saying things like, "What will she do? I feel so sorry for her," and a shred or two of reverent horror. ("I'd never have guessed this of John. He seemed like such a sweet 80 something.")

2. (Plastic Surgery Disclaimer) This one was played on me by one of Heather's and my good friends. She called me at work to tell me that a certain person in her family had fallen down the stairs and popped one of her breast implants. True Story. (I am not advocating or discouraging those who advocate or discourage plastic surgery. I, myself, pluck my eyebrows, and consider this to be a rudimentary form of plastic surgery.) Why did I believe this? Like I said, I'm guillable. I must have forgotten it was April Fool's Day, because this was a serious issue to me and before I got off the phone I was already praying for this girl's..............situation.

Now back to present.

This morning at work I sent an email to our admin asst and in the subject line put "2 things". In the body of the email I typed a bunch of crap using the font "Wingdings." Wingdings is a font that is just a bunch of symbols; completely illegible. Anyway, after she got in to work, I buzzed down to her phone and said, very focused, "Hey Missy, did you get that email - I wanted to make sure you got that taken care of this morning." To which she replied, "I got the email but it's a bunch of symbols. Weird."

"What? Symbols. What could you ever mean. That's weird," I say.

"I know," she says.

So I RE-send the email, and she says it came through that way again, but that none of her other emails are that way. I tell her I'll be right down to check things out. Before I go down to see her, I went to several other workers and had them send some Wingding emails to her too. Then I went down to check things out.

"Hmmm, we better ask Sheri what's going on," I tell her.

So I went and got Sheri (she knows computer crap) and explained everything, telling her to tell Missy that she must have the "Wingding Virus." That was my favorite part honestly. The Wingding Virus; brilliant!

So she explains to Missy that she also caught the Wingding Virus a couple weeks before and had to replace her computer tower; that it's a real bad virus. Missy couldn't believe it, and in the next half hour or so, she must've said the words "Wingding Virus" about thirty times. "I can't believe I got the Wingding Virus! The Wingding Virus is a horrible thing. I wonder where the Wingding Virus came from." Ahhh...it was good fun.

That's it. Hope your day was full of pranks too. I'd love to hear some good ones. Oh by the way, if your computer starts showing crap like this:

This is the Wingding Virus: Beware!!!

Then you've got the Wingding Virus too. Bummer.