April Fool’s Day celebrates humor that’s devoid of wit; it brings out all of the schmucks, especially the marketers who try to “win” the day with a viral campaign. Pranks just don’t translate well online.

I miss the analog age of April Fool’s Day – back when you could shove a friend into a pool without first asking if he had his phone on him.

The first practical joke I ever played was with the microphone attachment of my Skeletor’s castle, which gave me a deep and powerful voice. When Mom was doing laundry in the basement, I would stand at the top of the stairs trying to convince her I was the voice of God.

God’s commandments were simple in 1985: namely to put my brother Dan up for adoption and give all of his toys to me. It would’ve worked too if Mom hadn’t seen my feet standing on the top step. Flawless execution could have changed my life.

I desperately wanted to be a master prankster as a child. I had every gag gift I could find. This was long before the Internet when fart spray was just a mouse click away.

Back before emojis digitized our fake poop, tourist shops were the only place to get things like a plastic ice cube with a fly stuck inside of it. I had to wait all year to go back on vacation and then pray to find a Whoopie cushion crammed onto the shelf between the slingshots and Silly String.

Sure, I saw the advertisements on the backs of my comic books, but there was no chance of getting that expense approved from a single Mom on a regular Saturday afternoon.

In my house, those were vacation purchases only. Indulgences that could only be gotten when sponged off the whimsy of shopping in a beachfront town. Three dollars for glasses with mirrors that let me see what’s happening behind me doesn’t seem so absurd next to a three-hundred dollar crystal octopus.

I had a spring-loaded stick of bubble gum that snapped like a mouse trap across your fingernail when you grabbed it. Nobody ever got fooled by it, but they’d pull out the stick anyways wanting to see what happens. It was hilarious because it actually hurt like hell.

I would hide an electric buzzer in my palm to shock people when I shook their hands. It never lived up to my expectations; it merely made a noise to “shock” them, as in surprise them.

The packaging implied it would deliver an electric shock, and I bought many different versions expecting to gain a supernatural-like power over electricity.

It now seems odd that one of my life goals was not only to cause someone else’s electrocution, but to actually hold their hand as they convulsed their way towards death. Let’s just chalk it up to “boys will be boys.”

I still own my pair of funny nose and glasses and my wife Jenny put a few rubber chickens in my stocking last Christmas, but only one of my childhood prank props has survived this late into my life.

It is a jar of “mixed nuts” that I keep in my pantry and put out at every family party. It used to have a fake snake jump out. But after nearly forty years of use, it’s now just a jagged spring flaccidly inching towards the opener’s eyeball. The joke is that it is so obvious everyone knows what is inside, but every nephew has fallen for it at least once.

I’m never more proud of my nephews than when they see someone new at a family gathering and ask for help opening that can. It’s so important for kids today to have an education rooted in the classics.

I hope each of them will grow up to appreciate these sort of pranks. Well, most of them at least. It would be great if at least one asked to get the crystal octopus instead.

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