April Fools: I have practical experience in practical jokes

OK. So today is April Fools. I've never been much on April fools. However, as previously mentioned, I used to work with some practical jokesters. I even got in on the fun myself. Here is a list of the practical jokes I can remember:

• The aforementioned joke involving my "Seize the sock" coffee mug.
• We had a rubber roach that made its rounds around the office. I came in one day, sat down to work, and jumped when I saw a giant roach on my keyboard. I kept the roach for quite awhile, but eventually a couple of years later I put it on the digital readout of Paul's phone, so he would just see the silhouette of the roach on the lighted readout. It wound up being effective!
• Jon asked Paul one day to change his voice message. Paul (who naturally has a pretty deep voice) left a message on Jon's voice system in his most feminine and lilting voice: "Hi! You've reached Jon!" You had to hear it to get the full effect!
• Likewise Paul set my voice message. The generic computer system left the message that you've reached the voice mail of..., and in Paul's deepest voice he filled in HEATHER. It was hysterical! Just think of Jim Carrey as that female bodybuilder character Vera DeMilo he used to play on In Living Color.
  
• Tom took Jon's phone and hid it in the freezer. He's lucky that it didn't kill Jon's battery. At the end of the day, Jon went to leave and couldn't find his phone. Tom had forgotten he'd hid it in the freezer. It'd been in there for hours! Jon wound up calling his phone to track it down, and found it ringing in the freezer!
• Once, while Paul was gone for a few days, I got the bright idea to use the Auto-Correct feature in Microsoft to have Paul's computer auto-correct with certain terms. For instance, I set his computer to replace "Heather" with "The Goddess". Jon set it to replace "Jon" with "My Master". So when Paul returned to work, he would type "Heather", and the name would change to "The Goddess" in front of his eyes. He thought his system had been infected with a virus or something!
• I bought an Annoy-a-tron and used it on a number of individuals in the office. The Annoy-a-tron emits annoying beeping sounds and such, and is magnetized to hide in obscure locations. I would stick it under a table in a corner or on the back of a desk and leave it for a few hours or a day. People would begin to hear strange beeping sounds in their office, and couldn't track down where they were coming from. Jon was the only one who knew about it. So I can still get away with buying a new one and continuing to use it on people in the office!
• Paul took Brian's cell phone once and hid it in the ceiling tiles. Then we just waited for Brian to get a phone call (which happened quite often). Brian was trying to figure out where in the heck his phone had disappeared to, and eventually tracked it down to the ceiling! He had a harder time getting the phone down than 6'4" Paul had putting it up there!
  
• After Paul left the company, we stayed in touch. One day a month or two after he left I mentioned to him that we were having our monthly meeting, where we used to have pizza and such provided by the company for us. Paul mentioned, "Save some pizza for me!" So I did. I saved a slice of pizza, wrapped it in foil, and packed it in a priority mail box along with that rubber roach I spoke of earlier. I put this in the mail to him. Paul and his then-girlfriend/now-wife Jenn had to go to the post office to pick up this mysterious package. While in the car, Jenn opened the package while Paul drove. I guess she was startled by the roach, and then proceeded to open the foil to unwrap a several days-old piece of pizza. She didn't know what the heck was up with this, but Paul laughed and explained it all to her!

Those are the jokes that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there were other small ones that occurred over those years. Good times!

Also a quick note: Today is 13 years without even a single drag off of a cigarette. I didn't think that I could ever quit, but it's amazing what you can do when you just get pissed off at corruption in big business.