It’s going on a decade now since I pulled my favourite April Fool’s joke.

At the time, my family was living about seven hours away in North Bay, so I didn’t get to see them as often as I would have liked. It’s even worse now, with everyone spread across the globe from Canada to Japan. So I decided it would be nice to remind them that I was still alive and send out an April Fool’s salutation.

My youngest brother (and the co-host of this very blog) was North Bay’s leading cryptozoologist, and had appeared in this capacity on a local television station. With this in mind, I asked my friend The Healthiest Man In Canada to give Gary a call from a payphone at The Donut Diner. HMC introduced himself as a representative of the government assembling a think-tank devoted to unexplained phenomena. He had seen Gary discuss his theories on television, and he was interested in having Gary join their group. Gary was overjoyed that, after years of toiling in relative obscurity, such an opportunity had finally come his way. He immediately agreed to the proposition, and HMC began making the arrangements, which included transporting Gary to an undisclosed location for an unspecified number of months and ensuring that Gary would not tell anyone where he was going, why he was going, or that he was leaving at all. Feeling a little overwhelmed, Gary finally got a word in and told HMC that he was only a kid. HMC assured Gary that ‘they’ were aware of this, and that it was irrelevant. Every objection was dismissed. Drowning in panic and paranoia, Gary ceased to protest and began to hang up the phone. The last thing he heard was HMC’s declaration that someone would be there to pick him up immediately.

I called later to find out how it had gone over. My Mom answered the phone. She couldn’t stop laughing. She told me that Gary had walked upstairs, pale and shaking, and hugged my Mom for what he believed to be the final time. Gary related his experience to my family, and they all became very concerned. When Gary heard the sound of the Black Helicopters, they dug out the shotgun and waited for the inevitable.

The memory of that day still gets a laugh out of me every year. Happy April Fool’s Day, bro.

Illustration by Takeshi Miyazawa, from his mini-comic MIB.