April fools' pranks is not really a tradition between my wife, Martha, and me. We did pull a few jokes over our 22 years together, but nothing on a large scale. When our son Jeff left the house to attend college, the childish pranks mostly stopped. It's not that Martha and I are devoid of humor, but without the kid around we don't have to entertain anybody but ourselves.
But this year will be a bit different. One Saturday morning, while working in the garage, I moved an old alarm clock and remembered a prank I played to a roommate while attending university. And my absence on April 1st this year was perfect to replicate that prank. I had to meet an important client that Monday afternoon in the Canadian Mid-West. I had decided to travel Sunday March 31st, drive to the small industrial town where my client has his business and sleep there. That way, I would have no worries about a late March snow storm or any other kind of airline delay. And I am confident that I never told that prank to Martha, so it would be a real surprise.
While Martha was away Sunday, I set-up everything I needed to do, so my prank would be working in my absence. I am sure Martha knew something was amiss when I left for the airport around 3 PM. I had a hard time to hide my glee knowing what was in store for her for April Fool's Day.
Despite a 20 minutes delay, the trip went without a glitch. Four hours later, I was in my hotel room.
I didn't have to get up early the next day, so I was still up near midnight. At the stroke of midnight, I was able to visualize what was happening at home. At midnight plus one minute, a mechanical alarm clock would ring, waking up Martha for April fool's. I can see her slapping the alarm clock silent and turning back to try to go to sleep. She would be too groggy to wonder why a seldom used clock would be ringing in the middle of the night.
Then, at 12:15 AM, the radio alarm clock on the bedside would start ringing at full blast as I had the volume up to Max this afternoon. I am pretty sure Martha was just falling back to sleep.
At 12:30 AM, Jeff's old alarm clock, hidden in my socks' drawer, would start ringing loudly. I doubt by then that Martha was back asleep. Knowing me, she would have expected that one and now was probably trying to figure out what was to happen next as these were the only alarm clocks in the whole house.
At 12:45 AM came the grand finale. From my hotel room, I had already taken remote control of our desktop computer. It needs a little explanation here. For years, the desktop computer was in our den. But Martha decided some years back to convert the den into a craft room when she took a painting course. We don't use much the desktop anymore, maybe at tax time when we work on our tax filling, as our tablets and phones are our main Web surfing tools. Consequently, we did put a minuscule desk with the computer on it in the master bedroom, just next to her vanity.
At 12:45 AM, I had our cameras recording (on both the desktop and my laptop) and when I send a cam-to-cam chat request, the new ringtone would sound loudly in the bedroom. As soon as Martha would touch the mouse, the blank screen would disappear and would reveal my smiling face and, to be honest here, my hard-on that I was stroking for our benefit.
