Well, maybe it wasn’t April Fool’s day, but it was a good joke.

All the April Fools stuff going around the Internet today got me thinking about some of the jokes I’ve played on people in the past. This one came to mind and I thought I’d share it.

Back in the mid 1980s, I worked for the New York City Comptroller’s Office, Bureau of Financial Audit. I was a Field Audit Supervisor, with a cubicle on the 22nd floor of the Municipal Building.

In my cubicle, I had a small basket filled with hard candies. I didn’t eat them very often and didn’t recall seeing any of my cubicle visitors eat them very often. Yet the supply of candies was steadily declining. I realized that someone was pinching candies when I wasn’t around.

That made the culprit eligible to be a victim.

I went to a gag shop in Queens, NY, where I lived at the time. I bought a small package containing four garlic-filled hard candies. They were individually wrapped with shiny gold paper and cellophane — very easy to distinguish from my other candies. I brought them to the office and dropped them in the bowl.

Time went by. Every morning, I’d peek into the bowl and count the gold-wrapped candies. Four. Four. Four. More time passed. Four. Four. Three.

The day I arrived and found only three candies in the basket, I knew the trap had been sprung.

I never did find out who was pinching the candies…but they did stop disappearing.