He Says

The best pranks require careful planning.

April Fool’s Day is a tricky day for a man in a relationship.

Your girlfriend expects some kind of elaborate but lighthearted prank.

In fact, she wants a prank. You see, one of the reasons a woman is so easy to control is because she believes your elaborate, detailed plan to willfully deceive her is a sign you love her unconditionally.

Remember, this is a day for practical jokes. They have a purpose. There is no better way to remind your girlfriend you are in control of her life than by literally controlling events in her life.

You know the route she takes every day. You know her friends. You know her professors and classmates. You know the exact layout of her room and the location of every item in it.

Use as much of that information as possible to alter her life for this one day of the year. The more elaborate your joke, the more successful it will be. Remember, she is a woman, and she confuses dedication with commitment.

For instance, this last April Fool’s Day was a Tuesday. I know my girlfriend’s route from her home to her class, to work and every seedy, questionable stop in between. 

On Monday, I contacted every person she could possibly see on that route and paid them unbelievable amounts of money to call her by the wrong name.

Her teachers, friends and even strangers on the street all acted as though her name was Maleficent, the name of the villainous witch in Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty,“ a film that for various deep-seated psychological reasons terrifies my girlfriend.

While she was gone from her apartment, I snuck in and removed everything that had her name on it. I meticulously replaced her name with that of the mistress of all evil.

I replaced all of her clothing with the long black and purple cape and dress and weird Batman-style hat that Maleficent wears. I painted the walls a dull and dank gray, and made dragon clawmarks on them.

When she got home, I was dressed as Prince Phillip, the current one I kicked her door down and told her I’d been cheating on her with a girl in a coma and that she’d better do her dragon dance, because I was ready to fight.

We did battle for about 20 minutes and then, just as she was about to collapse on me and fall off the cliff, I threw down my broadsword and shouted “APRIL FOOL’S!”

She admitted later that she had actually believed she had turned into a dragon, and she had to summon all the powers of hell to destroy me. And, just as I had expected, she concluded by sniffling, “I can’t believe you did all this, just for me!”

She says

Take the high road with relationship pranks.

I hate April Fool’s Day.

I just wanted to get that out of the way so you all could read a column about pranks without coming in cold to my personal bias. I’ve been pranked before, and you know what: It’s not fun. In fact, I know very few people who like to be deceived, especially in the context of relationships.

That doesn’t mean, though, that there isn’t room for humor. In fact, for a relationship to work, there absolutely must be an element of fun, the ability to tease each other and crack a joke now and again. But don’t take it too far, or you’ll have a pretty pissed off partner on your hands. 

The key to a successful prank is basically, “Don’t Be A Dick.” In order to achieve this, here’s a list of things to AVOID:

1. The “I’m Breaking Up With You” Prank:  It is just as awful as it sounds. Some people actually find it hilarious to pretend, even for a few heartbreaking moments, to dump their lover on
April 1.

Maybe the pranker assumes the prankee will realize what’s happening. Maybe they’re even testing the waters for a future breakup, to see how it’ll go. But if you value your relationship, you’d better avoid it.

2. The “Guess What?  It’s herpes!” Prank: OK, I’ll admit, this one is pretty funny from the outside, but if you’re actually in the relationship, it can be a scary moment. And guess what? If you sit your partner down and give them that sort of news, you may not like the reaction. Even the moments before you yell, “Relax!  It’s a joke!” you may see a whole new side of your lover that you never wanted to see, full of bitterness and spite and the sort of freak rage that lets Hulk do his thing.

Knowing your significant other may not react to that news the way you want them to might irreparably damage your relationship.

3. The “I’m Gay” Prank: When your lover says, “Oh, I knew it,” you may feel less romantically disposed toward them.

That being said, there are a number of little April Fool’s jokes you can pull. A popular joke is to convince somebody of something in the news. Something like, “Hey, sweetie, did you read that article about Hillary Clinton? Apparently it just came out that she had an affair…with George Clooney. Yeah. Everybody’s talking about it.”

The problem with these is that they’re easily busted, as soon as your other logs on to the Internet to read the story. But every once in a while they’ll take you for your word and spend the rest of their day trying to convince their friends and professors th