April 1st is a day that many people dread and many wait for days or hours like children on Christmas day.
Many students at Monmouth University take pride in their pranks, and prepare for weeks, and even months before, making the plot against their friends, family, and even professors thicker with each passing second.
A senior sports communication student, Toni Lynn Taranto, said, “I have two younger sisters and one younger brother, so we take tricking each other very seriously.”
“The one I am most proud of is replacing my brother’s toothpaste with horseradish; the look on his face was priceless,” Taranto remembered.
Jokes are more fun when there are a bunch of people in on them. By having a group included in a joke, it also makes the person who is getting pranked take it more seriously.
A senior communication student, Gary Mortellite, said, “In high school, it was a group of like six or seven of us who planned the joke. My friend Pete loved his Jeep. He never let anyone else drive it or really touch it. “
Mortellite continued, “On April Fool’s Day, when we were leaving during senior sign out, which he did not have that day, we texted him that someone dented the passenger’s side of the Jeep. He was in tears. We kept it going for a while, and finally told him we were kidding. I’m pretty sure he almost had a heart attack.”
Students are not the only ones in on the fun; there are many faculty members that love to play games.
Dr. Aaron Furgason, associate professor and Department Chair of the Communication Department, added to the limitless list of jokes and said, “In the days before technology infiltrated life, a part of college life was pranks. Boredom equals pranks, whether it was April 1st or not.”
Furgason recalled, “A memorable prank was, a classmate and I moved a fellow students’ entire side of a shared dorm room and moved it completely intact in the same exact position, furniture, posters, desk, etc., in the showers of Elmwood.”
“We then made posters that said: ‘have you seen my room?’ with a picture of the room in the showers and posted them all over the dorms and tress near where he parked his car, so that when he returned from the weekend he would clearly see that it was his half of the room moved. The individual was not a roommate of mine or my accomplice, so it was a difficult prank to pull off,” Furgason said.
Jokes and tricks are entertaining, and humorous if they are in good fun. When someone takes the prank too far or does something that it not out of a good place, it is taking it too far. Not everyone has a good sense of humor, and some people might feel attacked.
Just remember to keep jokes light and in good fun!
PHOTO TAKEN by Alexandria Afanador
