My former brother-in-law was supposed to come for Thanksgiving dinner. This alone was going to be an adventure. Anyone who knows my sister’s ex-husband knows that he is, for lack of a better way to describe him, infinitely unique. My husband was not necessarily thrilled with the idea of him coming to dinner with his daughter, my niece, but he must have been feeling the holiday spirit when he agreed.

Uncle Paul, as we affectionately call him, is a well known prankster. He has a long track record of pulling some of the most memorable pranks on multiple family members. So when he called my niece to tell her that he had a change of plans and would not be coming after all, we were more than a little suspicious. We were certain that this was all an elaborate ruse to fool us into thinking he wasn’t coming, only to surprise us on Thanksgiving morning. He has done this before.

So my niece and I spent some time trying to foil his plan. We began doing our own detective work to determine where exactly he was on the day before Thanksgiving. We were determined not to be caught by surprise.

Wednesday afternoon, Crystal called her father to see if he was actually where he said he was going. At that point, there was no way to know for sure. He was clearly NOT in New York State where he was supposed to be, but according to him he was still driving. There was no way to corroborate his story until he arrived. She didn’t dare call her grandmother in New York and spoil the surprise if her father was in fact going there. For all we knew, he could be planning on shocking other people for Thanksgiving. But there were clues pointing to him heading to Georgia.

We continued to expect him to show up all the way until midmorning when he called from his mother’s house in New York. We verified the phone number. The joke was on us! He managed to pull a classic prank on us without doing a single thing. He’s good. I’ll give him that!

Until the next time…I’ll be braving the lines on Black Friday!