The amusing: Caught by the cops

Although she wasn’t directly involved, junior Jennifer Lee recalls an unusual police encounter that happened while her friend was performing an innocent action.

“My friend put post it notes on someone’s car and [the post-it note] just said ‘April Fools’ and [a cop] came by and was like ‘Oh, you look like a person who would rob this car,’” Lee said. “[My friend] was like ‘nope, just [putting] post-it notes on the car!’”

The playful: A little baby scare

Sophomore Sannidhi Menon recently tried to convince her younger sister that her mom was pregnant. It didn’t quite work, but her mom later recalled Menon’s prank to give the family a little scare.

“While we were waiting to go home, waiting for our ride, I saw some little kid and I was like ‘Oh, we’re gonna have a little kid in the house soon.’ [My sister] very briefly believed it,” Menon said. “And a week ago we had a family meeting and my mom told me she was going to announce her pregnancy when we were actually just taking a trip to Vancouver over spring break.”

The malicious: Double the trouble

Sometimes pranks start intentionally but end up working out brilliantly. Case in point: senior Mira Baliga, who managed to convince a friend that she had a twin sister for several weeks. And when she told her friend it was all a prank, her friend didn’t believe her and ended up checking with Baliga’s dad before accepting that it was all a prank.

“I showed up at school one day in someone else’s jacket and said ‘Hey, I’m Mira’s twin sister Anjali and she was like ‘Hey, it’s nice to meet you,’ Baliga said. “I told her I went to St. Francis and told her a couple things about ‘myself’ and then I was like ‘Ok, nice meeting you’ and then showed up a little while later like ‘Hey, my sister said she ran into you.’”

Since Baliga’s other friends were in on the prank, they managed to continue it throughout her and her “twin’s” birthday party.

“I pretended I was my sister and I was a total diva and I walked out and I was like ‘Who are you and why are you in my house?’ I was very jokingly rude to her,” Baliga said. “At some point, my mom called me ‘Mira’ and I was like ‘What? Can’t you tell your daughters apart?’’’

Whether a prank is pulled off as planned or is just a spur of the moment joke, pranks serve as memorable stories for families and friends to tell for years to come.