How to Quit in Greek

Lunch: Cheesy Pigs-in-a-Blanket and Chips
Dinner: Chili and Cornbread
Dessert: Chocolate Chip and Walnut Cookies

Happy April Fool’s Day! I like pulling pranks on people. For Christmas one year, we gave my brother a 6 pack of beer. He was really confused until he saw that 2 of the beers were full of money. He wanted to know 2 things: how to get the money out of the bottles and what did I do with all the beer that was in the bottles. I just realized last night that today was April 1st, and was racking my brain to think of some great joke I could play on the boys. I mean, you would think the possibilities would be endless as a chef. I researched food related pranks online and the ones I found were either gross and enough to get me fired (ex-lax in anything is a bad idea) or too time-consuming and too expensive. Making what looks like and entire meal out of nothing but candy seems funny, but do you have any idea how long that would take? Painstakingly hand rolling green beans out of Now and Laters… for 20 people? No thanks. I even called my grandpa, the king of all pranksters, and he couldn’t think of anything on the spot. He did have a funny story about a farting stuffed gorilla. (My grandpa has a thing for monkeys and for fart machines).

I love the French tradition for April fool’s day. The call it poisson d’Avril, or April fish. You take paper fish and tape them to other people’s backs so they don’t notice. Then they go around all day looking like a fool with a paper fish taped to their back. I am extraordinarily good at taping things to people’s backs without them realizing. In high school we went to a French immersion retreat that just happened to fall over April fool’s day weekend. Needless to say our rag tag group of Francophiles fished the heck out of the other schools. Enough so that the other schools present ganged up and tried to get us back. We were wise to their ways… Hee hee hee. It still gives me a chuckle.

Anyway, the question still came down to what to do to the guys… I couldn’t find a remote controlled fart machine like my mom suggested. So I decided to put out a tray of dog kibble complete with a decoration of dog biscuits. As the lunch trays are generally covered, the guys wouldn’t know anything was amiss until they got their plate, filled it with chips and such and then lifted the lid for the main dish…. and it was dog food. I had the real food in the kitchen. The first frat boy down was very astute and started laughing and came into the kitchen wanting to know where I hid the real food. The second guy was clearly not awake (he was still in his bath robe) he opened the lid, stuck the spoon in the kibble, and then set his plate down to go fill his cup with ice. He walked back out and just looked at the dog food. It was about that time that I popped out and said “Happy April Fool’s Day!”. I let him know the real food was in the kitchen. I don’t think he quite got it. Some of the guys were confused (and thereby fooled), but most of the guys caught on pretty quick and thought it was funny. But the best response was from a couple of the guys who thought I was seriously putting out dog food either because I was ticked off and decided to get back at them or that I was fed up with all the crap they’d given me and quit in grand fashion by feeding them dog food. Seriously? Who would quit that way? Well, at least I know in the future that a tray of dog food equals two week’s notice in Greek (get it?).