"Extremely Adult Behavior": April Fool's Day Memory

Only once in my life have I completely fallen for an April Fool's Day joke. That took place on April 1, 2005-- the year I graduated from high school.

I had been in history class when the school counselor suddenly came into the room with a stern, very serious look on her face.

"You need to come with me," she said gravely. Shaking and confused, I asked if everything was okay. She didn't answer-- only walked forward, shaking her head somberly. I asked again if everything was alright, and she shook her head silently. She led me to a room where my six closest friends were seated at desks, each looking completely panicked and confused.

At the front of the room, the school principal sat, looking even more grave than the counselor.

We all exchanged panicked looks and whispers. Are we in trouble? Did we do something wrong? Did someone get hurt? Is this some kind of joke? We did a quick head-count of our clique, each wondering if one of us had been injured or killed. Why were we all called into the room, away from our studies and teachers?

The principal stared at us, his lips pursed together tightly, for five long, tense minutes.

"I believe you know why you're here," he said finally, with a deep sigh. We shook our heads. I still remember the tightness in my chest and throat, expecting to hear horrible news.

Somberly, slowly, he wheeled a television into the room.

"We have standards of behavior for our students," he explained, shaking his head sadly, "And there are many behaviors that we refuse to tolerate, even if they take place off-campus. Among those are drinking, casual sex, and illegal drug use."

We objected immediately. None of us engaged in any of those behaviors. We were the nerds, the goody-goodies. We spent our weekends playing board games and watching Lord of the Rings. Drinking, drugs and promiscuous sex were what those other kids did.

A few of us burst into tears, expecting that we would be expelled just a month before graduation, over some sort of wild misunderstanding.

"Out of all of the students at this fine school, I would have never expected this of you guys," the principal continued gravely, "Someone recently turned in a very shocking video. It includes footage of everyone in this room engaging in some extremely adult behavior. Including..."

--here, he paused and pushed the "play" button on a DVD player--

"Musical. Chairs."

The TV screen instantly displayed a video of me and my 17- and 18-year-old friends, all giddily running around in circles and struggling to find a seat. It then fast-forwarded to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and hide-and-seek.

Finally cracking the smile he'd suppressed for the entirety of this time, the principal burst into laughter and shouted, "APRIL FOOLS!"

The footage had come from my friend's eighteenth birthday party. To commemorate her official transition into adulthood, she'd thrown a completely sober, completely innocent, childhood-themed party with preschool-type games and party favors.

The video camera had been left on top of her mother's car, and it fell to the asphalt somewhere along the highway. By chance, a person happened to find and recover the video. After presumably laughing his tail off at the video of eighteen-year-olds behaving like preschoolers, the finder noticed that one of us was wearing a tee-shirt with our school's initials on it. He brought the video to our school, where the entirety of the staff viewed it and conspired to create a shockingly convincing April Fool's Day prank.

To this day, I am still very close friends with the same circle of crazy young women who have been in my life since our early teen years. And, even today, we still laugh about April Fool's Day incident of 2005. I can't even imagine a more convincing or more startling prank for a group of well-behaved high-school seniors.