Last month we held a competition for the best April Fools’ Day Story.  Only subscribers to our newsletter could enter and Erik Moeller won a Free, Signed copy of our Freshman Album Crazy Water.  You can join the newsletter here.  Here is Erik’s story.

We were in basic training with the Navy and about 3 weeks from graduation.  Two of my roommates and I were having a beer trying to decide what trouble we could get into.  Since the next day was April 1, we thought it would be a good joke to tell everyone we had found out that there was going to be a “surprise” barracks inspection the next night at 1930 (that’s 7:30 PM for you civilians.)

A little before 7PM the bar was pretty empty and there was just the three of us finishing our beer and laughing to ourselves.  We casually strolled back to the barracks and looked down the passageway.  The DI was having an inspection and we were totally unprepared.  We were getting our gear together- Bill was putting his jock into the locker when the DI entered our room.  Everyone sprang to attention. Bill had his jock in his hands and when he went to attention, his thumbs caught in the jock and it spread out in front of him.

The DI asked where we had been and Bill responded, “The library, sir.”  The DI asked what the jock was all about and Bill said, “Heavy reading, sir.”  A smile started to cross his lips but before we could really see his face, the DI left the room.

That was the April fools joke that backfired but still turned out to be pretty funny.