Class of 2020 has pranktastic history

By Kate Stukenborg

Can your April Fools’ prank top any of these legendary SMS tricks? ​

It was April 1, 2016. Chloe Starns gave a big wave and yelled a greeting to Mrs. Karol as she walked by the hallway outside Mrs. Lyttle’s classroom. Ana Taylor hummed noticeably for an entire class period. Helen Hudson spoke in class. Something was not right. In case you didn’t already notice, all of this went down on the most underrated holiday of the year: April Fools’ day.

As a prank, each student in Mrs. Lyttle’s 8th grade math class decided to switch personalities with someone else in the room and see if she noticed. Chloe became me, Ana Taylor became Ana Albrecht, and Helen became Celia Stem. Given the big personalities in the class, it didn’t take long for Mrs. Lyttle to notice that we weren’t acting like ourselves, and she spent the rest of the period taking guesses at who was who.

Aside from the iconic Algebra Essentials switcheroo, the class of 2020 pulled a number of other pranks in 8th grade. Though multiple classes tried to prank Mrs. Mulrooney, she simply couldn't be fooled. One class created baby face masks and planned to put them on when she turned around. The prank stopped before it even began, though. She noticed the masks lying around before the class had a chance to put them on. As for my English section, we decided that, when Mrs. Mulrooney closed her eyes, we would hide under the conference table. Because I was in the restroom when it all went down, I returned to the empty table and took my seat as if nothing were different. When Mrs. Mulrooney winked at me and jokingly announced that we would be taking a quiz, I promptly took my place under that table along with the rest of my class. Needless to say, it did not work. English class resumed as usual, and we went about plotting our next prank: making some slight alterations to some paper-mache faces, which our grade created at the beginning of the year. For April Fools’ Day, we covered those faces which hung on the wall with printed faces of some of our favorite celebrities including none other than the cast of Disney’s “Lemonade Mouth.”

The tomfoolery doesn’t stop there, though: countless other legendary pranks have been pulled off by teachers too. When this year’s senior class was in seventh grade, Ms. Weirich played a trick on them. A few weeks after they had taken the National Spanish Exam, she told her class that the organization had lost all of the scores, and they would have to take it again. Arabella McGowan (12) said, “we were all shocked, and she was telling us to click on different things on the website. The whole time she’d just been telling us to click on random things.” Good one, Ms. Weirich!

While St. Mary’s has a history of pranks, from April Fools’ jokes to Black Friday shenanigans, there is still much more to come. Sarah Bratton (11), notorious prankster whose favorite pranks involve sticky notes and saran wrap, said, “I would really love to see a prank war between the grades. It would be so much fun to have a week set aside each year where grades just tried to outdo each other.” She also provided me with some much-needed prankspiration. Sarah said, “prank ideas are endless — Christmas wrap everything, cups filled with water all over the floor, crumpled up newspapers or styrofoam in offices or cars or rooms, toilet paper anything, fill drawers with bouncy balls, balloons everywhere with some that have glitter so it's dangerous to pop them all, plastering a picture all over, rubber band stuff together, put your friends number on some famous celebrity account … ”

Whether you’re wrapping cars or wearing masks, the April Fools’ possibilities are endless. 
And if you think you’re off the hook or that you’ve lost your opportunity to pull a prank once the day is over, remember that pranking isn’t just for April 1st.