By: Clay Miller

Every year on April 1, someone takes it too far. Everyone loves to have a laugh, and if the person you are pranking is in on the  fun, everything is fine. However, year after year, people will pull terrible pranks on one another, using the holiday as an excuse to hurt someone or their feelings. April 1 can be a fun holiday, but there are certain things you just shouldn’t do. To help, I created a list of the top 10 things not to do on April Fools Day.

Do not use the day as an excuse for sexual harassment. Okay, by now, we should all know exactly what sexual harassment is, but if not, I will clear it up. DO not touch someone who does not want to be touched, and do not make any kind of sexual advances or comments that they do not want. Man or woman, it’s still messed up.

1. If your joke causes bodily harm to another person, don’t do it. Yes, it may be funny, but it very rarely ends with the person in pain laughing about it.
2. Do not fake ask out/break up with anyone. I can’t imagine why anyone would think this is funny, but if you were thinking about doing this, I promise you, it is a bad idea. Hurt feelings are never funny.
3. Do not feed people stuff. Okay, yes, hot sauce and things like that can be funny, but a lot of people may end up getting sick. Plus, this person may have some sort of allergic reaction, and you may end up accidentally hospitalizing your best friend. Best to just stick to creativity.
4. Don’t use animals to prank someone. They have no idea what you are doing, and degrading some poor animal to mess with your buddies is kind of a messed up thing to do.
5. Do not Break/steal someone else’s stuff. Honestly, if you are taking someone else’s things without permission, that’s bad by itself, but if you break things or put them in a position where  they could get broken, that’s even worse.
6. Don’t get them into trouble. There is no reason to take a day of  fun and use it to cause problems in someone else’s life.
7. Don’t prank someone you don’t know very well. If you end up pranking someone you just met or someone you don’t know at all, you wont seem funny, you will just seem like a jerk. Leave other people out of it.
8. Do not blame someone for not liking your joke. If you decide to play a joke on someone and they don’t think it is funny, that is not their fault. They didn’t ask to be pranked, so don’t act as if the whole problem is theirs.
9. Do not let someone else do something to you that you don’t like. I have been cracking down hard on the people who make April Fools a miserable holiday throughout this article, but my main piece of advice is this: Don’t let someone else do something to you as a joke that bothers you. Just because people have decided that today is a day for pranking doesn’t mean you have to sit quietly and allow people to humor themselves. Be respectful but firm and tell them to stop.

If you have read this article and you can’t think of any good pranks to play on someone, there are quite a few that don’t do any of the things above that are still very funny. I will list a few examples below. Thank you so much for reading, and have a happy April Fools day, Tillers.

Examples of Good pranks: