I was born 29 years ago, 2 days back. My mom called my dad from the hospital and told him she’s in labour. He didn’t believe her. I don’t blame him because it was April Fool’s day. Frustrated, my mom called again but this time she got the doctor to tell him instead, and he came straight to the hospital. According to my parents, I was a tiny baby with no hair. I was so small that Dad called me “kitten”.

Anyway, a year later, on my 1st birthday, my parents invited friends to a lunch party at home. They waited and waited but no one showed up for the party. My parents had to call everyone and explain that it’s not a joke. So the lunch party was turned into a dinner party instead.

Since then I’ve had a few more pranks pulled on me on my birthdays. When I was 15, my classmate Lydia gave me a nicely wrapped present. When I opened it, I found it to be full of pencil ashes with no gift inside. She later gave me my real present. There was another time when a few friends gave me a huge present. I unwrapped it and found another layer of wrapping with newspapers. As it turned out, the gift was a small sized item but wrapped with so many layers of newspapers to make it into a huge box.

The biggest prank was just a few years back when a few of my colleagues teamed up to trick me. One of them bought me breakfast and insisted I sat with her in the pantry to eat. Then, someone else came in to say that she didn’t see my car at its usual spot when she came to work. I got a little worried and went to the basement to check. True enough, it wasn’t there! I went round looking and finally found it parked somewhere else. When I turned around, I saw all my colleagues standing there, laughing and then singing me a birthday song. They planned it so well…someone sneaked into my bag to take my car key while I was having breakfast and moved my car.

All being said, I’m not always the one to get conned. Once in school, we decided to trick our Home Science teacher. We switched class with another group who also happened to attend their Home Science class. When the teacher walked into class, he was quite surprised and confused. When we yelled out “April Fool”, he didn’t seem very pleased. I guess he didn’t find it funny at all.

Such good old days.