This April 1st was going to be different. No more googly eyes on milk containers or plastic spiders in the cutlery drawer. To get my wife’s adrenaline juiced I was going to make her scream before she went downstairs in the morning.

Lacking talent with my phone camera, it took over 10 minutes to get a terrifying selfie - maniacal grin, flaring nostrils, devilish eyes – but I finally captured a great ‘crazy bastard’ picture. Satisfied with the first part of my plan, I printed a color copy then stashed it on the top shelf in our bathroom closet along with a roll of plastic food wrap.

Later that evening, an hour after my wife went to bed, the full plot came together. I quietly snuck into our bathroom, took out the plastic wrap and stretched a few pieces across the porcelain toilet bowl under the seat. Next I taped that 8 x 11 pic of my scary face onto the wrap which would provide her with a fine wake-up greeting in the morning. Smirking at my ingenuity, I climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep.

What I didn’t take into account was the spicy chili I made for supper that night. While my wife prefers her chili fairly bland, she was a good sport and ate almost all of her serving along with some garlic bread and lots of water. That’s the good news.

The bad news - spicy food plays havoc with her innards and creates some rather uncomfortable colon contortions. So of course, at 2 am, she had a painful urge to purge which caused her to bolt out of bed, run to the bathroom without turning on lights and swiftly plunk herself onto the toilet seat.

Though I was sleeping quite soundly when she left the bed, her delirious screams woke me and left no doubt she found my surprise waiting for her. She kept shrieking “What the hell!!??? What the hell!!???” and stomping around in a frenzy, which at that moment mildly miffed me as I thought she was (once again) overreacting to a pretty funny prank.

I got out of bed and moved toward the commotion, trying desperately to stifle a giggle, until I got to the bathroom door. Even though she hit the light switch just as I arrived, the smell told me exactly “what the hell” happened.  I feigned confusion with the bright light blinding me, but my mind was racing to find an excuse to somehow diffuse her rage.  I quickly concluded though no amount of verbal tap dancing would smooth this over and I needed to own it, just as she came to realize what the full situation was.  At this point her fury was hurled directly at me, starting with “What the hell were you thinking?” followed by a few foul expletives and ending with “If you ever tell another soul about this I’ll kill you!”

When my eyes finally adjusted, the sight of her buttocks and legs covered in excrement thumped my guilt cord, and I offered a few contrite apologies that unsurprisingly fell on deaf ears.  The only thing I could do now was clean up the toilet and floor (with watering eyes and heaving stomach) then throw her pajamas, bathmat and towels into the washing machine while she had a long hot shower.  No amount of soap and scrubbing though would wash away her wrath so I dutifully moved to another bedroom to give her the space she needed for the remainder of the night. 

Fortunately her anger somewhat subsided by morning and she didn’t disown me, even if a definite chill presided over our discussion of the incident. By the end of breakfast she did muster a small chuckle, though not before I promised to be more considerate when it comes to future pranks.  And to never tell another soul about this one.