Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, I'm in for Alison Stewart. Something I love about Live Radio is talking to you, our listeners, when you call in and share things with us, we're lucky to hear it. Last week we got so many great calls. I wanted to share one of them with you. This is from last Wednesday, March 27th. We were speaking with Bryan Kim who's an editor at The Infatuation. We were talking about favorite neighborhood bars, and Nadette from Staten Island called in. Here's Nadette.

Nadette: You've got to come out to Staten Island for Steiny's. Steiny's is five minutes from the ferry, not even that far. The best thing about Steiny's is-- oh my God, I'm getting on the bus right now. Okay, no I'm not going to get on the bus, I'm going to wait. The best thing about Steiny's is it's really diverse. It really breaks the stereotype of Staten Island.

I go to Manhattan and I love all the boroughs, but I feel like when you go to a bar in East Village you're getting East Village types. When you go to the West Village, if you go to the West Bank, you're going theater goers, it's all the same people, but if you go to Steiny's you get all colors, all ages. How many times can you be in a bar with people that are 21 and 61?

Kousha Navidar: Thanks to all the callers and especially Nadette who did not get on the bus so she could share her bar recommendation with us. We really appreciate it. Shout out to her and to all our Staten Island listeners. If you miss that segment, we got a lot of great calls. Go back and listen, it's on our show page and our podcast feed for Wednesday, March 27th. Thanks to everyone who's calling, love it, just want to say that one more time.

All right, let's get this hour started with some practical jokes.

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Happy April Fools Day, and for the occasion, you might expect us to prank you on the radio with some silly piece of information that can't possibly be real, but somebody already did that today, so we've got to think of something else. No, we're actually going to start our April Fools Day conversation with a serious and genuine piece of the historical record.

Sitting somewhere in Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen amid Denmark's Crown Jewels alongside King Frederick IV's priceless glassware, there is this ornate 17th-century chair, and here's what it says on the collection's website, "The armchair is ingeniously constructed to grasp a guest with concealed tentacles in the armrests. The immobilized person could then be soaked by water running from a vessel in the back of the chair through channels in the seat. When the victim had been released and was getting up from the chair, a trumpet concealed in the seat would toot."

That's right. It's a whoopee cushion fit for a king, the king of Denmark who used it to humiliate members of his high court. Which brings us to practical jokes. Clearly, they've been around for a long time and they're as much for the upper crust as they are for the lowbrow. Among good friends, they can be a great way to bond and demonstrate trust and good faith, and pranks can also be a way to share a laugh at the expense of someone who might deserve it. Then, again, pranks can also be a tool of bullying and harassment, and they have implications about identity and belonging.

There's a lot going on here, even in the Danish ball with wet socks and trousers, who gets the trumpet of humiliation? We want to break it all down. Joining us now to share her research on the sociological and anthropological ideas that underlie practical jokes, please welcome Moira Marsh, author of the book, Practically Joking. She's also the collection manager for Anthropology, Folklore, and Sociology at the University of Indiana. Moira, thanks for joining us, and hey, happy April Fool's Day.

Moira Marsh: Happy April Fool's Day to you.

Kousha Navidar: How would you define a practical joke?

Moira Marsh: Well, a simple definition is just a trick that is played on someone for fun. If you want a more elaborate definition, it's a scripted play activity in which one of the major plays is unaware that they are playing.

Kousha Navidar: When you talk about that script, can you break that down a little bit? What are some genres or categories of pranks that you've come across in your research?

Moira Marsh: For April Fool's Day, a popular genre is the Fool's errand, a little wild goose chase, where you send someone to find an non-existent object or to perform an impossible task. "Go and milk the ducks," is one that's been around since the Middle Ages.

Kousha Navidar: Can you break that one down a little bit? I'm not familiar with that one.

Moira Marsh: You can't milk a duck.

Kousha Navidar: Got it, yes, sure.

Moira Marsh: I don't think. I wouldn't want to try.

Kousha Navidar: Right.

Moira Marsh: First, you must catch your duck and then-- or go and find a biography of Eve's grandmother, since Eve was the first woman, she didn't have a grandmother, so it's a non-existent object.

Kousha Navidar: Funny.

Moira Marsh: The script comes in where-- it's a simple one for the fool's errand. The dupe is going to go and follow instructions and do what they were told to do, and without success. That's a simple script. Then there are other scripts that get a lot more elaborate.

Kousha Navidar: You have other ones that include 'kick me' pranks. What are those? Is that just saying kick me on the back of a shirt?

Moira Marsh: That's a good example of turning someone into a performer or a player without their knowledge. If you affix a 'kick me' sign onto the person without them being aware, or if you're in France, you do it with a paper cut out of a fish because April Fool's Day is Poisson d'Avril, April Fish Day. Everything has to do with a fish theme if you're in France. If you put that thing on someone's back and they remain unaware of it, they go around go about their normal business, but totally unaware that everybody is watching them with unusual level of scrutiny as if they were on a stage. They just don't know it.

Kousha Navidar: You've also got booby traps and stunts as your other of the five categories. I've got to ask looking at this, put ons fool's errands, kick me pranks, booby traps, stunts, which one do you like to do the most?

Moira Marsh: Myself personally, I'm not a great practical joker. I'm too chicken [laughter]. Mine have been very simple. My husband likes to try and play tricks on me but I usually outwit him. He's got me once or twice with a-- and that's usually with a put-on. He will tell me a piece of news when I'm busy doing something else on April Fool's Day and say, "Hey guess what, did you hear, whatever it was?" If I'm not paying close attention I might react as he intended by going, "That can't possibly be true." An extreme reaction is usually what's expected in that, but I'm not really much of a practical joker myself.

Kousha Navidar: Well, listeners, if you're a practical joker we are here to hear your story. We want to hear your April Fool's Day pranks, whether you were the prankster or like Moira, somebody tried to make you the target. Give us a call and tell us about it. The number to call 212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC. We want to hear about any of your practical jokes, not just those reserved for April Fool's Days either. It could be one among loved ones or friends, or if it was a prank of 'poetic justice' or just a bonding experience, give us a call let us know.

212-433-9692. That's 212-433 WNYC. Moira, as I mentioned just now there are prank wars between two close friends on the other side of the spectrum that's used as a bonding experience, pranks where the target is pretty remote from the prankster where maybe they haven't even ever met. How are these kinds of pranks different in how they're shaped and their intended effect?

Moira Marsh: Prank wars are really interesting because they become a contest, a competition. The idea is if you play a joke on somebody, you have to realize that then they have every right to get you back. It's a it's a tit for tat and that's what fuels the prank war. It just goes on endlessly. Typically, people will look for jokes that are on the same theme. For instance, I talked to some people here in Indiana who lived in a rural area where a lot of people keep chickens.

Somebody started out by playing a joke on a member of their family that involved a chicken as a prop, and that set off a series over some years of playing jokes on each other back and forth, but each one involved chickens somehow. That becomes, then, a part of the challenge. You have to do one better than the previous joke, but you have to stick with the theme.

Kousha Navidar: Variations on the theme, like a piece of Mozart.

Moira Marsh: Exactly, yes.

Kousha Navidar: Well, it's funny. Joining us now for a quick story, we have a caller. Please, welcome Peter Gallagher a comic strip artist and art teacher who lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. I think he might have some experience with that tit-for-tat idea. Peter, hi, welcome to the show.

Peter Gallagher: Oh, hi. Thank you for having me. Yes, this is definitely fits in that category I think. This happened back when I was in grammar school. My older brother, he was in high school. Him and his friend went around to everybody, my other brothers and sisters when we were asleep in the middle of the night, and this is before cell phones. They had a Polaroid camera. They went into everybody's room and turned the light on and they took a polaroid picture of us as we woke up angry. They thought it was hilarious, and it was pretty funny, but he had the pictures around for a while. I started plotting my revenge, and my older brother was a good athlete. He played basketball, he ran cross country and stuff, but the one thing he loved, especially in high school, was his sleep. He loved his precious sleep. I was like, "Let me try to get him somehow with that." We had a bag of pretzels and it was the end of the pretzels, so it was crumbs and salt and stuff.

Same thing in the middle of the night. I went into his room and I quietly tiptoed in and sprinkled the pretzels and salt all over him as he slept. I was thinking maybe it was lame until the next day he told me, it was the worst night of sleep he ever got. He tossed and turned all night, so it seemed to work.

Kousha Navidar: Peter, did it keep going on? Did it escalate after that?

Peter Gallagher: No, no. Well, we were brothers, so we would always do things to each other, but that was the end of that feud. I think I got my revenge, for sure.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Peter, thanks so much for the call. Moira, listening to that, any takeaways from that? What would you call the variation on that theme?

Moira Marsh: I've noticed that there are quite a few jokes like that, that are played on people who are asleep. Anyone who is asleep surrounded by people who are awake is fair game, because it's as if they're not quite playing by the rules. If I'm awake, you ought to be awake. If you fall asleep at a party, for example, and other people around, things are going to happen.

Kousha Navidar: All's fair in love and familial prank wars, I guess. Let's go to Joanna in Dobbs Ferry. Hi, Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joanna: Hello [laughs].

Kousha Navidar: Hi. What's your story?

Joanna: Well, I'm a dental hygienist, and I worked in White Plains for a group practice with a dentist called Dr. Manzi and every year I'd prank him. I would swear that he'd never prank me back, but he managed to. One year I had this big rubber wrap and I went in early and I shoved the wrap under his desk, so this tail was peeking out, and then I hid in the closet and waited for him and the office manager to come.

He came in the room, and I hear the chair pushed so violently back that it hit the wall with a crash. He came storming out and he said to the office manager, "Lou, you know we got wraps in here."

Kousha Navidar: [laughs].

Joanna: At which point I came out. Yes, I really pranked him because that was so much fun.

Kousha Navidar: Joanna, did you feel like that brought the office closer together?

Joanna: Oh, yes. It was really fun. I would swear that he would never prank me back, but he always managed to, even though I was on the lookout, he'd prank me back. [laughs]

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Joanna, thanks so much for the call. Happy there were not rats actually in the office. Really smart. Joanna's call brings up the idea of humor as social value, I guess, Moira. What's the social value that practical jokes between friends can provide that just other kinds of humor can't, or doesn't?

Moira Marsh: Well, practical jokes are particularly risky form of humor because they do involve making one person a target without their permission, without their knowledge. That's particularly risky, but pranks almost never happen solo. There's almost always a group of people around the pranker, like the people in your office or your clinic, who know what the prankster is up to.

They may help or they may just be aware of it and support it and make sure that things stay within bounds, within the local, whatever the local idea of what's appropriate is. Just the process of going through that risky business or that risky play together seems to help bond people more closely.

Kousha Navidar: We're talking to Moira Marsh, who's the author of Practically Joking. We are talking about the arts and the social of the idea of pranking folks. On April Fool's Day, what better time to do it? Listeners, we want to hear your April's Fool's Day prank stories. Whether you were the prankster or the target, whether it was in the office or between your brother. Give us a call to tell us about it. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. We're going to be right back when we'll take more calls right after this.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar, and we're talking to Moira Marsh, the author of Practically Joking. We're talking about practical jokes. Happy April Fool's Day, everyone. We want to hear your practical jokes stories. Maybe you were the prankster, maybe you were the target. Maybe it's a prank that's still going on. Moira knows about all of the different categories these things fit into.

We want to hear your stories and be able to dissect them a little bit. Give us a call. Text us, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Moira, during the break, we got a lot of calls coming in. We're just going to go through a few to kick it off. We've got Theresa in Sparta, New Jersey. Hey, Theresa. Welcome to the show.

Theresa: Hey, thank you. My prank was, my boyfriend was deathly afraid of snakes, but I wasn't. We had a pond on the property, so there were always snakes [chuckles] available. One day when he left, I went out and caught a snake and I kept it, so no snakes were harmed in this. Before he got home, I hadn't like, "Oh, tell me when you're going to be home."

Five minutes before he got home, I put it into an Amazon box, taped it up and gave it to him. When he came in, I'm like, "Oh, you got a package." [laughter] He opened it up, it was a live-- [laughter] Oh my God. My kids were in on it, so they laughed. He didn't laugh so much, and now he's my ex-boyfriend, so I'm not sure how much that [unintelligible 00:16:10] but I still laugh, though.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Art comes first for you, Theresa. That's great. Thanks so much for that call and for that story. We've got Toby in Phoenix, Arizona. Hey, Toby, welcome to the show.

Toby: Hi, thanks. I'm now in my 50s, but one of my favorite pranks I remember from college. My best friend was turning 21 finally, and he was so excited to get into the local bars. I went ahead of time to a strip of bars and told them all to reject his card. Sure enough, we went bar hopping one after another. Each one rejected his card as being a fake. He got incredibly frustrated until finally the last one said, "Fine, come on in." Voila, the joke's on him.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Toby, thanks so much. That's some dedication. We've also got Shelly in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. Hi, Shelly, welcome to the show.

Shelly: Hello. My mother who's now 87, her favorite day is April Fool's Day. Growing up every April Fool's Day, the night before she would sew our underwear shut in one leg. She would make sure just in case you didn't take the top one, she would do two or three. She'd do this to me and my sisters and my dad. Every year we'd forget and you're sleepy and we'd fall over and the joke was on us.

Growing up she'd also do Vaseline on the toilet seats, put notes in our sandwiches. Then after we married, she started getting more elaborate. One year she put a crib in front of my house, and then she started putting signs up at her friend's houses. One of the best was last year. It said, "Condo breakfast, starting at 6:00 AM. Bring your friends and pets.

Kousha Navidar: Wow.

[chuckling]

Kousha Navidar: Shelly, thanks. Shelly, that's a lot. That started off with sewing underwear and it escalated to inviting people to your house. That's wild. Moira, you hear all of these, Theresa with the snakes, Toby getting his friend's ID rejected at bars, and Shelly with a lot, starting with sewing underwear in one leg. Do any of those stick out to you as perfect encapsulations of a prank for you and maybe in a category that you talk about in your book?

Moira Marsh: Well, a lot of them are the examples of the booby trap jokes or the snake in the box, or even the sewing the underwear leg shut. Those work because we do so many things by routine. When you're putting your pants on in the morning, you don't think about it, you don't check. You just do it automatically. One theorist has argued that when we act like that, we're actually acting like robots, and a practical joke is a way to point out to us that maybe we are being a little bit too robotic.

Kousha Navidar: Oh.

Moira Marsh: Not paying enough attention. Then, Theresa's boyfriend who's afraid of snakes, she considers that a weakness. Often, something that is considered a weakness or a fault with another becomes the subject of a joke that plays upon that weakness.

Kousha Navidar: Then they broke up. [laughs] Then, call it a weakness?

Moira Marsh: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Maybe, yes. Maybe a sensitive touch point for some folks. We've also got Chris in Brooklyn. Hi, Chris. Welcome to the show.

Chris: Thank you. Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: What's your story?

Chris: My story is many years ago I worked for an internist, and part of my job was to collect urine samples, take them from the cup, put them in the tube, label them, and they would go off to the lab. One day, we had a very difficult couple, and we knew them. We will call them the Hemlocks. As I usually do, that day I happened to have some apple juice with me. I thought, when you put apple juice in a Dixie cup, it looks like urine. What I did, I put the apple juice in one of the cups and I came out to the doctor, who we had a very good rapport, great sense of humor. I held the cup, and I said, "Dr. Smith, whose urine is this?"

He looked at me and he said, "I don't know." I tasted it and I did my lips. I said, "I think it's Mr. Hemlock's." Then that was it. He just looked at me and then I just lost it. That was where it ended. That's it.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Chris, you can't see our faces right now, but both Moira and I just have our jaws drop. Thank you so much for that call. Moira, I saw you right when Chris started talking, you gave a big reaction. Talk to us about what that reaction was.

Moira Marsh: I was guessing that it was going to be the apple juice as urine trick. That's a popular one. It plays with one of those things that is most fundamental and basic. Playing with pranks that are around subjects like we started with farting at the beginning and now we've moved on to urine and also feces. There are jokes that play with all of those things that are very basic fundamental things, but they are guaranteed to get a reaction.

Kousha Navidar: What do you think it is about those basic human functions that get such a universal reaction for humor and for pranks, more specifically?

Moira Marsh: They're primordial. They speak to the part of our psychology that is just the most primitive.

Kousha Navidar: When we were talking about some-- we got one caller who said, I put the snake in the box, and then my boyfriend and I broke up. You've said that when pranking friends, you have to be prepared to apologize if you go too far. In those scenarios, what is it about the nature of that relationship that's been misjudged that you might lend yourself a trip into that, "Oh, I took it too far," situation?

Moira Marsh: It's a combination of things. I think playing jokes on someone that you don't know very well is tricky. You need to know your target very well, particularly for a tailored customized joke like that one because it's important to avoid the topics that the target cares very deeply about. You're not going to know that necessarily unless you know that person very well.

Kousha Navidar: [unintelligible 00:22:43] Yes, sorry, go ahead.

Moira Marsh: There's a metaphor that's sometimes used. It's about if you're making buckskin out of deer hide, you have to work it and work it and work it overtime until it becomes soft and supple. When it's soft and supple, you can really yank and pull on it, and it's not going to tear, but if you do it too soon, it will tear, it will break. It's the same with friendships.

Kousha Navidar: It makes me wonder about when you've taken something too far or you call something that's "just joking" I guess, but it's something else. When you think about it through your research, how do you look at the context to determine if something is, "Oh, I'm sorry, I took it too far," versus, "No, this is a comment on you and I'm passive aggressive," I guess.

Moira Marsh: There's a lot of passive-aggressive in this material for sure. You can never be absolutely certain. That's the thing about humor. The humor, the 'just joking' frame is always very ambiguous, very tricky. Maybe it's just a joke. Maybe it's something more. Maybe the person who thinks it's just a joke is unaware of their unconscious motivations going on. There's so much built into it. It's just never simple.

Kousha Navidar: How do you think it's been changed by social media? Like TikTok, Instagram, bigger audiences, does that change the way that you've seen practical jokes evolving?

Moira Marsh: Of course, social media means that the audience becomes enormous, but it also means that the number of targets becomes even more enormous and you don't know anything about them. Correct? Then you're really relying on the anonymity. That's not particularly new. If you were playing jokes on people where you didn't care how they react because they were enemies, or they were just people that you wanted to distinguish yourself from.

Halloween pranks by kids on homeowners, for instance, you don't really care if the homeowners get annoyed or pissed off. You do need to be able to get away. Anonymity really helps with that. Of course, social media is all about anonymity.

Kousha Navidar: We've got time for one more call. Let's go to Peter in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Hi, Peter. Welcome to the show.

Peter: Hi, how you doing? Great show.

Kousha Navidar: Thanks. What's your story?

Peter: When I was young I was working in the kitchen in a restaurant in terrible conditions for very bad pay. The kitchen would get back at me for jokes by putting chocolate powder like cocoa powder on my phone and the phone was black, so I walked around the restaurant, front of the house, with chocolate all over my face, and I looked ridiculous.

I got them back by taking an egg, break it in two places and blow out the insides. You could fill it with water, and I go up and I have a real egg in one hand and fake egg in the other and I just smack them in the back with an egg [unintelligible 00:25:34] We'd be doing this back and forth all day [unintelligible 00:25:37] working in the back of the house of the restaurant.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wow. Peter, thanks so much for that call. We're talking about cocoa powder on the phone. Eggs that are one fake, one real and cracking it. It seems like good-natured fun. Moira, do you have any recommendations or go-tos that you offer to people who might ask you, "Hey, I want to get in on this, but I want it to be playful. What are some easy ways for me to prank somebody safely?"

Moira Marsh: First of all, know your target. Second of all, don't make it anonymous. Admit what you have done. Give them a chance to know that you were the one responsible and then be willing to take retribution. That's a show of good faith if you do that.

Kousha Navidar: What does retribution look like? What should people be prepared for in that sense?

Moira Marsh: Hopefully, it means somehow they're going to get you back with a joke in turn. You need to be prepared to be part of the beginning of a joke feud, perhaps.

Kousha Navidar: I've got to ask, has anyone tried to prank you yet today or do you have any pranks planned? No spoiler alerts.

Moira Marsh: Not to my knowledge [laughter]. Honestly, I've just been working this morning and I hadn't even looked to see if there were any. Google, for instance, they always do something for April Fool's Day. As far as I can tell, this year they didn't. Maybe I wasn't looking closely.

Kousha Navidar: For listeners who are interested, I wore a costume to work today. If you want to see that, you can check out our Instagram later today. We'll have a picture of that out on there for you. We were talking to Moira Marsh, author of Practically Joking, also the library collections manager for Anthropology, Folklore and Sociology at the University of Indiana. Moira, Happy April Fool's Day and thanks for joining us.

Moira Marsh: Thank you very much. It's been fun.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: Coming up after a quick break, Nona Faustine. She's a Brooklyn-born and -raised photographer whose work is currently at the Brooklyn Museum. The show focuses on her white shoes series in which she poses in white stiletto heels on New York historical sites that have a historical connection to slavery. Nona Faustine joins me to discuss the show and her practice. Stay with us.

 

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