When I was about 5 years old, I tried to prank my parents for April Fools’. I told them their shoes were untied (I know, pretty innovative), and they naturally pretended to fall for it. While at the time I felt quite accomplished, I now realize that I am a total failure at pulling a good, harmless joke.

Many students, however, have had much more success on April 1, and many have fallen victim to some pretty nasty jokes. SDA students were interviewed and asked about their most fond–or perhaps traumatizing–April Fools’ Day memories. Here is what they had to say.

“My brother got me one time by giving me an Oreo, which is my favorite cookie, filled with toothpaste instead of the cream, and it was my own fault for eating it because it was right after school and I was starving and not thinking properly….I got mad at him for wasting a perfectly good Oreo.” – Autumn Kleinrath, junior

“Freshman year in band we were playing a piece where it was just clarinets doing the melody and…so [some of us]…brought [a different type of clarinet] so when…[we] came in, it was a different key and Mr. Wuertz was so confused.” – Sofia Piedrafita-Ortiz, junior

“Everyone in my dance studio dressed the same to throw our teacher for a loop…he said, ‘You chose today of all days to look like real ballerinas?’ because we all dressed in formal ballet attire which never happens.” – Emmy Hawkes, senior

“Once when I was in third grade, I got this idea from a book I was reading where the main character…was pulling an April Fools’ prank on one of her friends where the joke was that there wasn’t any joke at all. Basically, the idea was that a few days before April Fools’, she’d talk to the person she was planning to prank and hype up the craziness of a potential joke so that the….[person] would be super paranoid. I thought it was so great and tried it on my sister and it didn’t really work because she didn’t really care…but it was fun to try at the time.” – Michelle He, junior

“Last year, [some friends and I] had a pretty good prank war going. And right before April Fools’, my friend changed all of my contacts in my phone. We wanted to get him back big. We got about $12 in pennies at 4 a.m., then went in the back door of his house, spread pennies and cards all over his room and a line leading from the door to his bike. At school the next day, we put lines of pennies in front of his [classes] and around areas he was gonna be. By around noon he had no idea who broke into his house and was stalking him at school. It was fantastic.” – Winston Moore, sophomore

“In French, we did this tradition called Poisson d’Avril [where] you make a paper fish and stick it on someone’s back without them noticing.” – Mina Seif Asgari Barkosarai, junior

“One time I took a shoe from each pair in my sister’s closet and hid them when she was out. When she came home, she was so confused and it was so funny!”- Laila Halim, junior

“One time I told my friend I’d buy him snacks and he got excited but then I didn’t buy him snacks. #fooled!” – Yoni Kruvi, senior

“When my brother and I were really little, my uncle explained to us what April Fools’ Day was a few months before it was actually April. We didn’t understand that it wasn’t actually April Fools’ Day, so we thought we should pull a prank on him, and we hid his car keys and wallet….We made him late to work.” – Anna Lonsway, junior

“My dad used to drink milk straight from the carton and then put it back in the fridge. [One day], he ran out of milk and put the carton into the bag of recycling by the door. As a joke, I got the carton back out and filled it with some old split pea soup and freaking SOAP and then put it back in the fridge because who would forget that they ran out of milk that SAME day? Not too long after I hear, ‘SHEA?!?!’ He had actually drank the thing the same day he ran out of it. He wasn’t too happy about the soap.” – Shea Fairbanks-Galaudet, senior