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In my 3)natal family, the holiest of holidays were April Fools’, Valentine’s, Halloween, and the first night of 4)Passover, in that order. To joke was to love, was to entertain, was to celebrate liberty. My friends were brought up to take praying seriously; my brother and I, to take playing seriously. Pranking was not only allowed, it was encouraged. Maybe it was even 5)mandatory. And there were rules. Tricking people wasn’t supposed to be mean. The 6)butt of your joke wasn’t meant to feel like a 7)jerk. Ideally the victim would be warmed and flattered by the attention. Oh, look how smart I am, that it took so much effort to 8)beguile me.
Sometimes it went brilliantly right, and sometimes it didn’t.
Five o’clock on a lovely early spring evening, and my mother called me in from the backyard. She and my father were going out to dinner, she said, and she had my dinner ready at the kitchen table.
Pretty weird: No one, not even babies, dined at five in our family; and the kitchen table, in the rooster-wallpaper 9)nook, was only for lunch and dinner. But my mother had a happy, 10)adoring look on her face, and I didn’t think twice about going along with whatever she wanted me to do. I washed my hands and sat down at the table. I can see it perfectly across the years—the 11)Formica table12)festively set with a straw 13)placemat, yellow cloth napkin, and a fork and knife from the dining room 14)flatware. Looked like a party.
With a flourish, my mother set a plate before me: two sunny-side-up eggs, a couple of strips of bacon, and a heap of bright peas and carrots. It wasn’t the sort of food we ate for dinner—I think that was the year of 15)Steak Diane—and the bacon was curiously unaromatic, but my mother was calling it dinner, and so dinner it was. I stuck a fork into the yolk. Well, tried to stick it in. Everything on the plate was candy. Thus, my first April Fools’ Day, and sheer perfection. My mother and I laughed and ate the 16)marzipan veggies, and I felt very loved.
Less successful was the time my mother called me into the kitchen; said, “Nancy, I’m angry at you”; and threw a drinking glass at my feet. It shattered on the 17)linoleum floor, and I burst into hysterical tears. “Nooo!” my mother 18)wailed, gathering me into her arms. “It was a joke! That’s Libby’s new Bounce glass! It was supposed to pop right up like a tennis ball! Oh, baby girl, I’m so sorry, I’m going to write a letter to Libby and 19)give them hell.”
Rule: Always know your materials.
Then there was the time my mother suddenly declared, in the middle of a family dinner, that she didn’t feel well. My father, brother, and I watched in horror as she got up from the table, ran to a corner of the room, bent over in front of the Picasso 20)urn, and made horrible 21)retching noises. When my adoring 22)hypochondriac of a father saw the pile of 23)vomit on the floor, he almost fainted. “Plastic!” my mother exclaimed, picking up the ugly thing. But dinner was wrecked.
Rule: Always know your audience.
24)Fast-forward to the next generation of family life. Elsewhere on this site, you may hear from my grown-up kids, Rose and Albert, about our 25)patented version of the prank: the narf. I don’t quite know how the word or the concept got introduced into our world when the kids were small. Maybe it’s an 26)acronym for Not A Real Fact.
Our narf is a spoken prank. It’s an attempt to get another family member to believe, if only for a second, a patent bit of nonsense that should defy27)credulity in even a half-awake, distracted person who is, say, busily making 28)brownies while writing a novel and playing 29)backgammon.
“There’a a kangaroo in the bathroom.”
“I’ve been 30)short-listed for the Nobel!”
Rose and Albert are in their 20s now, and we still occasionally narf one another, or try to. How has narfing endured all these years when so much else has fallen away? I 31)give credit to its having rules and 32)protocols, like any meaningful game. Here is 33)anarchy with etiquette—satisfying two sides of the 34)polyhedron soul. For instance, narfing is nearly 35)cruelty-free. It’s not a narf to tell someone who loves you that you’ve been diagnosed with36)leprosy. If your narf 37)misfires, and someone’s 38)bullshit detector lights up, you immediately have to confess. To say “no narf” when it is a narf is a violation of the deepest order.
Back to the natal family. For the last forty years or so, my younger brother and I have been so 39)poised to be pranked by the other on April first, a telephone call on the day would go like this.
“Hi. I was walking down—”
“April Fools’!”
With the coming of caller ID, neither of us could even say “Hi” before being doubted by the other. So one recent year my brother April Fooled me the night before, and then claimed it was okay because we’re Jewish and the holiday had started at sundown.
I think that’s up there, or down there, with failing to test the Bounce glass. And yet, I was secretly glad that he’d violated good form. I love being fooled, and it’s happening less and less. I just don’t feel I can let my guard down these days.
“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” says that man in Washington.
“Narf,” say we.
“No narf,” says he.
As Joey has proved over and again, confessing that you’ve played a prank is part of what makes it a prank instead of 40)malicious mischief. Joey for president. Or someone else who won’t say “no narf” when it’s very exactly a narf.
Oh, bring back the springtime of candy carrots and peas.
在我出生成长的家庭里，最神圣的节日依次往下排就是愚人节，情人节，万圣节和逾越节的第一个晚上。我们觉得恶作剧是一种爱的表达，是一种娱乐，也是一种对自由的庆祝。我的朋友们从小到大都将祈祷看得很重要；而我和弟弟则把玩耍看得很重要。恶作剧不只是被允许的，它还是备受大家推崇的。甚至可能可以说是非玩不可的。当然，也是要讲求规则的。戏弄他人时不能太卑鄙。你的玩笑并不是为了证明被你捉弄的人是个笨蛋。理想的恶作剧是为了让被捉弄的人感到温暖，感到被关注而开心。噢，看我多机灵，要捉弄我你可得费不少功夫才行呢。
有些时候，恶作剧能水到渠成，可有些时候就不一定了。
那是一个美丽的早春，傍晚五点钟，妈妈把我从后院叫回家，对我说，她和爸爸要出去吃饭，我的晚饭已经准备好了，就在餐桌上。
真奇怪。我们家从来没有在五点就吃晚饭的，连小宝宝们也不会这么早；还有，摆在贴有公鸡壁纸的角落里的那张餐桌只有在正式的午餐和晚餐时才会用到。但是妈妈一脸开心雀跃的样子，我毫不犹豫地就照她说的去做了。我洗了手，然后坐在桌子前面。就算过了这么多年，当时的情景依旧历历在目：像过节似的，那张富美家牌防火胶板桌上铺着一张草编餐垫，黄色的布餐巾，以及从套装餐具里抽出来的刀叉。看上去像开宴会。
妈妈端了一个装着丰盛食物的盘子放到我面前：两个荷包蛋，两片培根肉片，还有一堆颜色鲜艳的豌豆和胡萝卜。这些都不是我们平时晚饭吃的东西——那年的正餐我们流行吃“黛安牛排”——而且面前这些培根肉片很奇怪地没有香味。但既然妈妈说这是晚餐，那这就是晚餐吧。我想用叉子叉住蛋黄。然而，怎么也叉不进去。原来盘子里的所有东西都是糖果。这就是我的第一个愚人节，一切都完美极了。我和妈妈都笑了，并一起吃那些用杏仁蛋白糊做成的蔬菜，那一刻，我觉得温暖极了。
当然，不是每次恶作剧都这么成功的。有一次，妈妈把我叫进厨房，对我说：“南希，你惹妈妈生气了”，紧接着把一个水杯摔到了我脚边，杯子摔在亚麻地板上，碎了。我吓了一跳，大哭了起来。妈妈也慌了，把我搂在怀里，难过地喊叫着：“不！那只是个玩笑！那是利比最新的弹性玻璃杯！摔到地上应该像网球那样弹起来的！噢，我的宝贝女儿，真对不起，我一定要写信投诉他们，该死的。”
恶作剧规则：了解你的整人工具。
再接下来就是有一次当大家正在吃晚饭的时候，妈妈突然说她不舒服。爸爸，弟弟和我就惊恐地看着她迅速从桌子旁站起来，跑到房间的角落，在那个毕加索壶前弯下身子，发出了恐怖的干呕声。我那个本来就疑心重的可爱老爸看到地板上那堆呕吐物时，他几乎昏了过去。“是塑料做的！”妈妈边说边把那些看起来很恶心的东西捡了起来。可是，谁也没有兴致继续吃晚餐了。
恶作剧规则：了解你的恶作剧对象。
现在快进到我家庭生活中的下一代吧。你也许在别的什么地方听到我那两个成年的孩子，罗丝和艾伯特，说起过我们的“专利”恶作剧“narf”。其实我也不清楚这个词或者概念是怎么在孩子们还小的时候就出现在我们的生活中的。这个词是“Not A Real Fact”（意为“是假的”）这个词组的缩写。
我们的“narf”是一种口头上的恶作剧，就是尝试让另一个家庭成员去相信一些胡说八道的东西，哪怕只是蒙骗了对方一秒钟也算成功了，即使当时对方正半梦半醒，或者正在分心做其他事情，如，正在忙碌地做着核仁巧克力饼，正在写小说或者正在下西洋双陆棋。
“洗手间有只袋鼠。”
“我已经入选诺贝尔奖了！”
罗丝和艾伯特如今都已20多岁了，但是我们还是会偶尔玩一下“narf”，倒不是每次都成功。当那么多种恶作剧都慢慢地被大家玩腻了时，“narf”这个恶作剧为何还能如此经久不衰呢？我觉得这可能归功于这个恶作剧具备的规则和礼节（这个说法有点怪怪的），就跟任何有意义的游戏一样。有规矩的混乱，可以满足人们精神上的双面需要。举个例子，“narf”恶作剧几乎不会伤害到人，它不是那种跟爱你的人们说你被诊断出得了麻风病的谎话。而且，当你的“narf”把戏失败了， 对方开始有所警觉时，那你就要立刻坦白承认。如果以“no narf（是真的）”来掩饰自己的胡言乱语，那你就严重违规了。
再回到我长大的家里。在过去的四十多年里，我和弟弟已经练就了一身镇静自若的本领来应对彼此的愚人节恶作剧，有时候会在电话里玩这样的恶作剧：
“嗨，我那天走在……”
“愚人节快乐！”
后来有了来电显示，结果我们连那句“嗨”也给省了，一看号码就顿时警觉起来。所以最近有一年弟弟在愚人节前一天晚上就来捉弄我了，还振振有词地说这无所谓，因为我们是犹太人，按照传统，3月31日太阳下山后就是愚人节了。
我想自弹性玻璃杯的闹剧失败后，那又是另一底线了。（编者注：此指弟弟在愚人节前一晚就开始捉弄，并以犹太人传统来强辩的做法有点让人难以接受。）然而，即使弟弟这般“暗箭伤人”，可我还是会偷着乐。我喜欢被捉弄，虽然发生在我身上的恶作剧已经越来越少，但这些年来，我那根弦始终绷着，不敢放松警惕。
“伊拉克有大规模杀伤性武器。”一个来自华盛顿的人这样说。
“是假的。”我们把它当成恶作剧。
“是真的。”他反驳道。
就如美国知名的媒体“整蛊专家”乔伊（Joey Skaggs）一次又一次地证实过那样，承认自己在胡闹，这种坦白正是使之成为一场玩笑，而不是一种恶意中伤的关键之一。应该让乔伊当总统，或者是其他那些不会以“no narf”来狡辩的人。
哦，让那些充满胡萝卜糖和豌豆糖的美好春日时光回来吧。
Sometimes it went brilliantly right, and sometimes it didn’t.
Five o’clock on a lovely early spring evening, and my mother called me in from the backyard. She and my father were going out to dinner, she said, and she had my dinner ready at the kitchen table.
Pretty weird: No one, not even babies, dined at five in our family; and the kitchen table, in the rooster-wallpaper 9)nook, was only for lunch and dinner. But my mother had a happy, 10)adoring look on her face, and I didn’t think twice about going along with whatever she wanted me to do. I washed my hands and sat down at the table. I can see it perfectly across the years—the 11)Formica table12)festively set with a straw 13)placemat, yellow cloth napkin, and a fork and knife from the dining room 14)flatware. Looked like a party.
With a flourish, my mother set a plate before me: two sunny-side-up eggs, a couple of strips of bacon, and a heap of bright peas and carrots. It wasn’t the sort of food we ate for dinner—I think that was the year of 15)Steak Diane—and the bacon was curiously unaromatic, but my mother was calling it dinner, and so dinner it was. I stuck a fork into the yolk. Well, tried to stick it in. Everything on the plate was candy. Thus, my first April Fools’ Day, and sheer perfection. My mother and I laughed and ate the 16)marzipan veggies, and I felt very loved.
Less successful was the time my mother called me into the kitchen; said, “Nancy, I’m angry at you”; and threw a drinking glass at my feet. It shattered on the 17)linoleum floor, and I burst into hysterical tears. “Nooo!” my mother 18)wailed, gathering me into her arms. “It was a joke! That’s Libby’s new Bounce glass! It was supposed to pop right up like a tennis ball! Oh, baby girl, I’m so sorry, I’m going to write a letter to Libby and 19)give them hell.”
Rule: Always know your materials.
Then there was the time my mother suddenly declared, in the middle of a family dinner, that she didn’t feel well. My father, brother, and I watched in horror as she got up from the table, ran to a corner of the room, bent over in front of the Picasso 20)urn, and made horrible 21)retching noises. When my adoring 22)hypochondriac of a father saw the pile of 23)vomit on the floor, he almost fainted. “Plastic!” my mother exclaimed, picking up the ugly thing. But dinner was wrecked.
Rule: Always know your audience.
24)Fast-forward to the next generation of family life. Elsewhere on this site, you may hear from my grown-up kids, Rose and Albert, about our 25)patented version of the prank: the narf. I don’t quite know how the word or the concept got introduced into our world when the kids were small. Maybe it’s an 26)acronym for Not A Real Fact.
Our narf is a spoken prank. It’s an attempt to get another family member to believe, if only for a second, a patent bit of nonsense that should defy27)credulity in even a half-awake, distracted person who is, say, busily making 28)brownies while writing a novel and playing 29)backgammon.
“There’a a kangaroo in the bathroom.”
“I’ve been 30)short-listed for the Nobel!”
Rose and Albert are in their 20s now, and we still occasionally narf one another, or try to. How has narfing endured all these years when so much else has fallen away? I 31)give credit to its having rules and 32)protocols, like any meaningful game. Here is 33)anarchy with etiquette—satisfying two sides of the 34)polyhedron soul. For instance, narfing is nearly 35)cruelty-free. It’s not a narf to tell someone who loves you that you’ve been diagnosed with36)leprosy. If your narf 37)misfires, and someone’s 38)bullshit detector lights up, you immediately have to confess. To say “no narf” when it is a narf is a violation of the deepest order.
Back to the natal family. For the last forty years or so, my younger brother and I have been so 39)poised to be pranked by the other on April first, a telephone call on the day would go like this.
“Hi. I was walking down—”
“April Fools’!”
With the coming of caller ID, neither of us could even say “Hi” before being doubted by the other. So one recent year my brother April Fooled me the night before, and then claimed it was okay because we’re Jewish and the holiday had started at sundown.
I think that’s up there, or down there, with failing to test the Bounce glass. And yet, I was secretly glad that he’d violated good form. I love being fooled, and it’s happening less and less. I just don’t feel I can let my guard down these days.
“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” says that man in Washington.
“Narf,” say we.
“No narf,” says he.
As Joey has proved over and again, confessing that you’ve played a prank is part of what makes it a prank instead of 40)malicious mischief. Joey for president. Or someone else who won’t say “no narf” when it’s very exactly a narf.
Oh, bring back the springtime of candy carrots and peas.
在我出生成长的家庭里，最神圣的节日依次往下排就是愚人节，情人节，万圣节和逾越节的第一个晚上。我们觉得恶作剧是一种爱的表达，是一种娱乐，也是一种对自由的庆祝。我的朋友们从小到大都将祈祷看得很重要；而我和弟弟则把玩耍看得很重要。恶作剧不只是被允许的，它还是备受大家推崇的。甚至可能可以说是非玩不可的。当然，也是要讲求规则的。戏弄他人时不能太卑鄙。你的玩笑并不是为了证明被你捉弄的人是个笨蛋。理想的恶作剧是为了让被捉弄的人感到温暖，感到被关注而开心。噢，看我多机灵，要捉弄我你可得费不少功夫才行呢。
有些时候，恶作剧能水到渠成，可有些时候就不一定了。
那是一个美丽的早春，傍晚五点钟，妈妈把我从后院叫回家，对我说，她和爸爸要出去吃饭，我的晚饭已经准备好了，就在餐桌上。
真奇怪。我们家从来没有在五点就吃晚饭的，连小宝宝们也不会这么早；还有，摆在贴有公鸡壁纸的角落里的那张餐桌只有在正式的午餐和晚餐时才会用到。但是妈妈一脸开心雀跃的样子，我毫不犹豫地就照她说的去做了。我洗了手，然后坐在桌子前面。就算过了这么多年，当时的情景依旧历历在目：像过节似的，那张富美家牌防火胶板桌上铺着一张草编餐垫，黄色的布餐巾，以及从套装餐具里抽出来的刀叉。看上去像开宴会。
妈妈端了一个装着丰盛食物的盘子放到我面前：两个荷包蛋，两片培根肉片，还有一堆颜色鲜艳的豌豆和胡萝卜。这些都不是我们平时晚饭吃的东西——那年的正餐我们流行吃“黛安牛排”——而且面前这些培根肉片很奇怪地没有香味。但既然妈妈说这是晚餐，那这就是晚餐吧。我想用叉子叉住蛋黄。然而，怎么也叉不进去。原来盘子里的所有东西都是糖果。这就是我的第一个愚人节，一切都完美极了。我和妈妈都笑了，并一起吃那些用杏仁蛋白糊做成的蔬菜，那一刻，我觉得温暖极了。
当然，不是每次恶作剧都这么成功的。有一次，妈妈把我叫进厨房，对我说：“南希，你惹妈妈生气了”，紧接着把一个水杯摔到了我脚边，杯子摔在亚麻地板上，碎了。我吓了一跳，大哭了起来。妈妈也慌了，把我搂在怀里，难过地喊叫着：“不！那只是个玩笑！那是利比最新的弹性玻璃杯！摔到地上应该像网球那样弹起来的！噢，我的宝贝女儿，真对不起，我一定要写信投诉他们，该死的。”
恶作剧规则：了解你的整人工具。
再接下来就是有一次当大家正在吃晚饭的时候，妈妈突然说她不舒服。爸爸，弟弟和我就惊恐地看着她迅速从桌子旁站起来，跑到房间的角落，在那个毕加索壶前弯下身子，发出了恐怖的干呕声。我那个本来就疑心重的可爱老爸看到地板上那堆呕吐物时，他几乎昏了过去。“是塑料做的！”妈妈边说边把那些看起来很恶心的东西捡了起来。可是，谁也没有兴致继续吃晚餐了。
恶作剧规则：了解你的恶作剧对象。
现在快进到我家庭生活中的下一代吧。你也许在别的什么地方听到我那两个成年的孩子，罗丝和艾伯特，说起过我们的“专利”恶作剧“narf”。其实我也不清楚这个词或者概念是怎么在孩子们还小的时候就出现在我们的生活中的。这个词是“Not A Real Fact”（意为“是假的”）这个词组的缩写。
我们的“narf”是一种口头上的恶作剧，就是尝试让另一个家庭成员去相信一些胡说八道的东西，哪怕只是蒙骗了对方一秒钟也算成功了，即使当时对方正半梦半醒，或者正在分心做其他事情，如，正在忙碌地做着核仁巧克力饼，正在写小说或者正在下西洋双陆棋。
“洗手间有只袋鼠。”
“我已经入选诺贝尔奖了！”
罗丝和艾伯特如今都已20多岁了，但是我们还是会偶尔玩一下“narf”，倒不是每次都成功。当那么多种恶作剧都慢慢地被大家玩腻了时，“narf”这个恶作剧为何还能如此经久不衰呢？我觉得这可能归功于这个恶作剧具备的规则和礼节（这个说法有点怪怪的），就跟任何有意义的游戏一样。有规矩的混乱，可以满足人们精神上的双面需要。举个例子，“narf”恶作剧几乎不会伤害到人，它不是那种跟爱你的人们说你被诊断出得了麻风病的谎话。而且，当你的“narf”把戏失败了， 对方开始有所警觉时，那你就要立刻坦白承认。如果以“no narf（是真的）”来掩饰自己的胡言乱语，那你就严重违规了。
再回到我长大的家里。在过去的四十多年里，我和弟弟已经练就了一身镇静自若的本领来应对彼此的愚人节恶作剧，有时候会在电话里玩这样的恶作剧：
“嗨，我那天走在……”
“愚人节快乐！”
后来有了来电显示，结果我们连那句“嗨”也给省了，一看号码就顿时警觉起来。所以最近有一年弟弟在愚人节前一天晚上就来捉弄我了，还振振有词地说这无所谓，因为我们是犹太人，按照传统，3月31日太阳下山后就是愚人节了。
我想自弹性玻璃杯的闹剧失败后，那又是另一底线了。（编者注：此指弟弟在愚人节前一晚就开始捉弄，并以犹太人传统来强辩的做法有点让人难以接受。）然而，即使弟弟这般“暗箭伤人”，可我还是会偷着乐。我喜欢被捉弄，虽然发生在我身上的恶作剧已经越来越少，但这些年来，我那根弦始终绷着，不敢放松警惕。
“伊拉克有大规模杀伤性武器。”一个来自华盛顿的人这样说。
“是假的。”我们把它当成恶作剧。
“是真的。”他反驳道。
就如美国知名的媒体“整蛊专家”乔伊（Joey Skaggs）一次又一次地证实过那样，承认自己在胡闹，这种坦白正是使之成为一场玩笑，而不是一种恶意中伤的关键之一。应该让乔伊当总统，或者是其他那些不会以“no narf”来狡辩的人。
哦，让那些充满胡萝卜糖和豌豆糖的美好春日时光回来吧。