Creative Practical Prank

April is getting near along with April Fools Day. John Barge told me that he has thought of a new trick to play on his wife Sue. He says it's mild compared to last year, when his victim was his middle-aged cousin Will. Will had just bought a pickup truck. He had not picked it up yet. John had a friend call Will and say, "Hi, I'm with the Sea City Police Department. Do you have a truck with a license plate AGX 454?" Will said yes. The man said gently, "We just dredged it up out of the town lake." Will went into panic mode. He says he will pay John back, but so far he has not done so. I am sure it will happen. He told John, "When you least expect it, expect it."

John knows Sue and all her habits, of course, because they have been married almost forty years. He knows that Sue is not a morning person. She gets up on autopilot and goes out to grab the newspaper. She then reads it cover to cover, still on autopilot and half asleep. So John is going to get up earlier than Sue, steal their Sea City newspaper, and put an old one in its place out of the prodigious piles of old papers in the garage. He bets she will get up, pick up the paper, and read it all the way through without looking at the date on top. The only thing that might give the game away is if she sees any ads for "Warm Winter Sweaters" in a Christmas sale, or reads about politicians that have not been in office for years.