The Ord by: Jacob Kern

March 30^th, 2010 was the moment that I received this idea to pull off probably the best April Fool’s Joke I have ever attempted. I had taken off this week from work because my kids were on Spring Break. My Brother in Law and Sister in Law knew this and for some reason either forgot or just decided to call me at 07:00 in the morning while I was trying to sleep. The good news is I didn’t hear the phone ring and until I looked at my phone after I got up around 09:00, realized that I had a missed call early and why was someone who knew I was off trying to wake me up? Then it hit me as I thought about it taking a shower that morning. It was as if there was a light bulb as bright as the morning sun. A clairvoyance started to play out in my head and as I tried to keep my composure.

I got out of the shower and could barely contain myself from laughter as I dried off to tell my wife. As I told her the plan she started laughing and agreed that this was the funniest joke ever and we had to do it. As a family, including all 3 of my kids and the dog were now in on this. It was going to be a family affair and it was going to be legendary at least w/in the family. If I had the money and the time I would have set up cameras but was unable to so this is next best thing, posting on my blog about it.

We all loaded up in the van and went to a thrift store and purchased 4 clock radios at $2 dollars a piece. We also went and purchased a pack of 4, 9 Volt batteries to put into the alarm clocks to have a fail-safe in-case they were discovered or the power went out in the night.  We tested every alarm clock prior to launch and they were all a go. The only problem we had was with one of them the actual radio would come on periodically (more about this a little later). However, they were all functioning, as we needed them to. Phase 1 was complete. We now had to move into phase 2 but this part was a little tricky because it required us to get into my Brother in Law and Sister In Law’s house and we did not have a key.

My wife finally came up with a brilliant way to achieve this, my birthday is this month and she was going to get them to leave a key under their mat so that she could put my present into their house so I could not find it *wink, *wink. The entire family loaded up in the van, my 7-year-old son, 6-year-old daughter, 20-month-old son, my wife, and of course myself headed to install alarm clocks. When we arrived and got out there was no key. What were we going to do?  We texted Ted (my brother in Law), no answer he was in class, we called Carley (My Sister in Law), she was at work. For about 15 minutes there was no response as we tried to figure out a way. Carley finally replied back and my wife told her about having to get this present into the house but Ted forgot to leave a key. Carley was all the way on the other side of town but we had to see this through so we loaded up again in the van went across town and got the key. However, in order for this to work she could not know I was there so the older kids and I got out at the CVS down the street and waited while my wife Nicole went to pick up the key. She came back about 15 minutes later and we went back across town about a 20 minute ride, but had to install these w/in the next 40 minutes because Ted was going to come back from school by that time.

When we arrived we quickly gathered the alarm clocks got inside and the rule was not to touch anything because we obviously did not have a present and we needed to give the illusion that we were never there.

I placed the 1^st alarm clock on the cabinets above the microwave and set it for 12:02 AM. I hid the 2^nd clock behind the Washer and Dryer and set it for 02:37. Remember the radio that was making random noises, well I set the radio to a station that was static in the hopes that all they would here through out the night was SSSSS, SSSS, SSSS, and placed it under the bed and set it for 03:42. Finally I placed the 4^th one under their TV stand tangled it up around all the other cords like the XBOX, TV, Surround sound cables. The idea was that they would not be able to get to it and take the cords out however it had a battery and it was behind and underneath the TV stand was not an easy task.

April 1^st 04:51 AM y wife and I received a phone call we of course had our phones on vibrate so we would not be disturbed in our slumbers. However, we did wake up and started to giggle immensely immediately upon seeing who was calling. We did not answer however, in hopes that a Voicemail would be left for later use, we were not so lucky. However, we did receive a text that said “The first one was funny but now we r pissed. We still have to get up and go to school and work and now we have gotten no sleep. Thanks this F%^#ing sucks!! Hope u slept well.”

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS!!