April Fool's Day reportedly filled with fools
It’s the first day of April. That means things are about to get fantastic.
Seriously. It’s been a long, dark winter in Ohio in more ways than one. And now the sun is shining and the flowers are starting to come out. Back around Halloween, winter started in these parts, and things started to get… interesting… and I told myself that this Spring was going to be the Spring of all Springs, and that I couldn’t wait until April, because April was going to be fantastic. April was when it all started.
You know about Seinfeld’s “Summer of George”? Well, this is going to be the “Summer of Johnny.” It’s basically the same thing, but taller and involving more boobs.
(At this point, ncwinters is totally going to plug his boob casts thing to support breast cancer research. And you know what? Go buy some boobs. That’s the one big thing that breast cancer causes really have going for them — they have this great product that everyone on all sides can support. I’ve totally given them money and bought the bags of pink M&M’s. We even entered this raffle at Applebee’s once and won a big basket filled with pink stuff. My wife wears the pink hat and my son stole the pink golf balls even though that kid’s slice SUCKS.)
So today is April Fool’s Day and I’m really AFD stupid and my son walks into my office and says, “Daddy, turn around.”
So I turn.
He says, “Okay, turn back.”
And when I turn to look, he’s facing away from me, with his shirt up, and there’s a big green smiley face on his back in Magic Marker. And he says, “April Fool’s!”
I’m like, “What?”
“April Fool’s!”
I looked at my wife, Robin.
“I don’t get it.”
And she says, “Are you fooled?”
I guess. This really topped my list of the most nonsensical jokes ever. The only comparable gag I can think of would be rolling a tire over a stick of butter in the middle of a field somewhere. I mean, that’s just as knee-slapping hilarious, and just as big of a joke on people who work in mattress warehouses. In Duluth.
“I’m totally fooled,” I said. Then: “What am I fooled about?”
And he goes, “April Fool’s!”
So yeah, kids are dumb, which is why I realize now that I thought my mom was such a genius. I mean, she is pretty smart, but I thought she was downright clairvoyant. Austin routinely tells me that he’s not jumping on the couch when I can hear him doing it, and will claim to have taken a nap in the two minutes he spent in his room. I mean, I know time is relative, but he doesn’t travel at the speed of light. Close, but not quite.
But look at me casting judgment. It’s not like I’m some brainiac. I’m the one who went to school and would be surprised to find my suspiciously-heavy lunch bag filled with nuts and bolts because my mother is a laff riot. But at least she’d then leave me money so I didn’t starve, which is more than I can say for my delightfully insane grandmother.
“D.D,” as we all know her, used to sabotage her kids’ lunches and then laugh when they came home hungry. She also told my very Caucasian uncle that he was half Japanese. When he went to school and his teachers doubted him, he defended his mother, who then laughed at him when he got home. Then she told him that Robert Kennedy’s mother used to do her laundry. He defended that too.
I’m not kidding.
The coolest victim of D.D.’s jokes was my somewhat curmudgeony grandfather. When Papa was asleep, D.D would decorate him in various ways. Or she’d carefully remove The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from his hands and replace it with Norman Vincent Peale’s The Positive Power of Jesus Christ. And when Papa woke up, he’d refuse to acknowledge the joke and would keep reading as if he hadn’t noticed.
Then she’d put waxed paper in the middle of sandwiches so that when you bit into it and pulled away, the paper would come out and annihilate the sandwich. Another time, Papa fell asleep on the toilet. So, ever up for a joke, she just left him there and he woke up the next morning all numb and limping.
I’m such a disappointment. I don’t do practical jokes — not even on this Christmas of practical jokes days. No, I just get them pulled on me. Like this time I thought I was looking at my son, but I was actually looking at his back, and I was like, WTF.
Awesome. Dumb, but simply awesome.
But the joke is on all of you, because I’m now going to reveal my big April Fool’s Day surprise. I’m actually Mamie Van Doren.
But because I suck, I’m sure you’ve known all along. What with the epic boobs and all.