April Fools

I recognize that April Fools day was nearly a week ago but for once in my life, I've been busy. With the Boss working nights and a little from home I have even been able to leave the house. We went to the Grandparents, to the grocery store, took the kids to the dollar movies, all kinds of errands that usually get taken for granted. But for me they have managed to become genuine events simply for the fact that I get out of the house.

On April Fools day, my kids actually pulled off a pretty decent prank. Haggis got some toilet paper and wrote on it with a sharpie marker. They then snuck into my bathroom and laid the note in the toilet. The water "melted" the tp so it was translucent, but the words were pretty easy to read. When I got up in the morning, I had to ask the Boss just what the heck it was (Blind man can't see even that far).

It sounded like one of those Foxworthy "you might be a redneck if..." jokes.

"If you've ever spoken the phrase, "Hey hon...what the heck is this that's floating in the toilet... you might be a red neck..."

At the very least it has been added to the list of phrases that I never, ever thought would escape my lips. It turns out the note said, "Halt, who goes there? Happy April Fools, love your children".

Not too bad an effort, I must say.

It may surprise you that I myself do not participate in April Fools jokes. I know, a guy with the wildly inappropriate sense of humor that I have would skip a day like that? It does seem bizarre but it's true and there are reasons.

Two of them.

First, the last time I tried an April Fools joke it backfired...badly. I was 15 or 16and got the brilliant idea to loosen the lid on the salt shaker. The whole family was sitting down to dinner, which was a real treat because April first also happens to be Uncle T's birthday (We will refrain from making any comments on the irony. Uncle T has heard it all before). We got to have steak, and with seven kids in the family, that was a fairly rare (pardon the pun) delicacy.

One of my bone head friends had told me that he'd loosened the lid on the salt shaker at breakfast at his house and assured me it had been hilarious. Not one to miss a chance to get a laugh, I gave it a go myself.

My sister L got the lucky(?) draw to be first with the salt, and when the lid came off, I cackled and laughed and shouted (way too loudly) "April fools!!!"

No one laughed.

My sister did start to sob, though. Dad got about three quarters of the way between irritated and homicidal and I instantly knew I had way way way overplayed the "prank". I wanted to crawl under the table and figured I was in for something awful. Dad just reached over, took my sister's plate and swapped it with mine.

Looking back, I see this as a brilliant parental move. Not only did I have to eat the saltiest piece of meat this side of a slim jim, but since I was older, my portion had been significantly larger. He wouldn't excuse me from the table until I cleared the plate (no Iodine deficiency here) and when I was finished he gave me his patented piercing stare that I wish I could a) never see again and b) duplicate myself for my own kids. It was worse than a spanking, worse than a grounding, way worse than a time out (which no one had ever heard of back then because parents still had brain cells that worked).

"Was it worth the laugh?" he asked.

It wasn't.

So let me take this opportunity to again apologize to my sister for being a mean spirited jerk all those years ago. Sorry about your steak, sis.

Secondly, when you have been a personal witness to the single greatest April Fools joke in the history of all creation, there seems little sense in trying to one up it. And let me tell you friends, I was present on that day.

Burley, Idaho.

I was nine or ten. My brother and I were watching TV in my Grandparents living room with my Dad and my Grandpa. Mom and Grandma were in the kitchen which was adjacent to the living room.

The living room had a large throw-rug on the floor and my brother and I were laying on the carpet. Suddenly Grandpa got really excited and started to shout "There's a mouse under the rug! There's a mouse under the rug!"

Now, my grandfather was a very large fan of the same things that we found interesting. He was always giving my brothers and I things like rubber snakes, sling shots (and since he sold bearings for a living, he had the greatest wrist rocket ammunition supply dump this side of anywhere), and once he had even shot a jack rabbit and gave my brothers and I real, no longer live, but honest to goodness rabbits feet. They were ten times cooler than those fake little colored things that you could buy in "Boys Life" magazine. We were envied by all our friends back home.

Looking back, I'm sure my mother was not thrilled at having four severed rabbits feet in her house, but she'd have had to sever our hands to take them away from us.

But with a Grandfather like ours, even if there wasn't an actual mouse under the rug there was a fifty-fifty chance that there was at least a rubber rat hiding somewhere for us. So K and I shot up like we'd been blasted out of cannons, and started tossing the rug and looking under the couches for that mouse.

I remember Dad laughing while Grandpa whooped and cheered us on. If all he'd caught with this little prank had been my brother and I, I would say that it was a pretty good gag, and worth the time to write down for posterity. But Grandpa had one other fish on the line, and it was that one which made this the single greatest April Fools Prank ever.

Grandma had been washing dishes in the kitchen and had heard every word. She didn't know how on earth a vermin could have found it's way into her spotlessly clean house; but any rodent with the intestinal fortitude to invade her abode had a VERY SHORT and pain filled existence to look toward. She had grabbed her broom and came into the living room swinging. I still remember the look on her face and it said that if she'd had the time, she'd have gone downstairs and loaded one of Grandpa's shotguns instead of swinging a broom. That would have been the unluckiest mouse under heaven's blue sky.

It suddenly dawned on Grandpa what he had done and he erupted into laughter. Dad was near tears, and my brother and I didn't really get what had happened.

"Where is it?" Grandma asked like she was part of the Spanish Inquisition.

"There isn't one." said Grandpa between peals of laughter. "I was giving the boys a little April Fools fun."

"Not funny" said Grandma.

I think this is probably the only time in eternity that my Grandmother was wrong about anything.

It was funny. Very funny. And Grandpa agrees with me.

Which is why I never play an April Fools joke.

How could I ever hope to top the Master?