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I’m writing this on April
fools day. When you’re reading it is of no concern to me. For me it’s right now and as
far as you and your personal now go, I don’t give a smoothly shaved rat’s ass, as my Dad used to say.
My one year old celebrated the day by beginning to vomit
around 12:45 and creating laundry for about three hours before settling into a wheezy
crying jag and finally being gently lulled to sleep by the sound of my
alarm going off. Luckily today was also daylight savings time, so it was
really, really early.
I soon discovered our car was gone. I felt pretty good
about that as we’d had the clutch replaced. That’s the second new clutch since we
bought the car two years ago, so I didn’t have to worry about the thief
having a jumpy bumpy ride. Lord knows that’s not how I like to start my
day.
You might think my enthusiasm for April Fool’s pranks
was a little dampened by the holiday jests the Good Lord had already played on me.
You might imagine me praying, "Oh Lord our God, Master of the Universe
who created the fruit of the vine, if you’re not too busy ignoring war
crimes in Albania and Aids in Africa, could you take a moment and stop
screwing me?", but that kind of thing is too selfish for me, and
besides, my concept of God is less that of a benign and all powerful
Father and more like a vast, incomprehensible cosmic meat grinder. I
guess if I’m wrong that was a bad thing to say. My point is, while I did
indeed feel somewhat jostled by the vicissitudes of life this morning, I
saw it not as a warning, but a challenge.
It’s not unusual for me to wake my five year old up on a
Sunday morning by shrieking she’s late for school, ‘Fire, fire!’ or that old classic
‘get away you bad kidnapper!’, but going that extra mile on Holidays is
an important part of parenting, so I took one of her stuffed animals,
filled an incision with cold spaghetti and sauce, gently laid it on her
chest and bellowed "GOOD CHRIST, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE CAT?!" Then
before she could really orient herself I put her in time out for the
whole day and made a beeline for work.
The Wife is harder to trick and quite a bit stronger in
the left hook department. I settled for calling her every five minutes from work and
asking in a high, nasal voice if there were any messages for Abdullah.
This was doubly amusing as we have caller ID so there was never any
doubt it was me and it turns out ‘Abdullah’ is, by coincidence, turns
out to be the name of the man she’s cheating on me with. I’m kidding, of
course. My little April fools joke on you. How could anyone who would
marry me be able to get a boyfriend?
All that left was my coworkers which is hard as I’m the
only one in my division who works Sundays. I learned the hard way last year that the
old burning bag of dog poo is only funny if the person who’s door you
put it in front of is there. Otherwise it just burns and burns and
then later you get fired. Of course last year April Fools didn’t fall on a
Sunday, so why I set fire to a bag of dog crap in front of my VP.’s
locked door is really anybody’s guess. It’s lucky I hung on to my keys
and ID, otherwise I’d never be able to pull off anything this year. I
guess it’s kind of funny I came in at all, in an ironic way.
As it turns out, our car wasn’t stolen. When the
mechanic yesterday said "I’m dropping it off", apparently by ‘it’ he meant the keys and the
bill. So I guess I regret what I did on his front porch on the way
to work this morning, even if it is April Fool’s day. I particularly regret
there was no dog around. Also I hope no one saw me filling the bag.
note: As an added April Fools gag,
Max Burbank included a virus (which destroyed our computers)
with this piece. Ha Ha Ha, what a kidder that Max guy!) *loads
gun*
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