Department Of Excuses For A Rerun
April 1 is one of my favorite days. This year it seems like it snuck past moiself, and I missed it.
I used to be so much fun…didn’t I? I looked into my archives for evidence, and came up with moiself’s April 1 post from seven years ago:
Department Of Fun With Student Drivers
Dateline: Tuesday, early a.m., out for my morning walk, waiting to cross a street. As I watched the cross traffic’s stoplight and saw the green-changing-to-yellow light – the pedestrian’s rewarding indicator that it will soon be your turn to cross the street – I noticed a white sedan slowing down much more deliberately than is usual yet still not managing to come to a complete stop until the car’s front bumper was just a tad into the crosswalk.
My light changed to green, I began to cross the street, and saw the telltale red and yellow logo for a local driving academy on the car’s driver’s door. A student driver?
Excellent.
I looked inside the car: the student in the driver’s seat sat ramrod straight, an expression of nervous anticipation drenching her face. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the steering wheel, and her gaze was fixed ahead. Her instructor was looking down at a clipboard he held; neither of them seemed aware of my approaching presence.
My instinctive reaction was to throw myself onto the hood of the car and scare the living pee-pee out of both of them.
How I managed to restrain myself, I’ll never know.
But, I did. Okay?
* * *
Pity the afore-mentioned scenario happened Tuesday, and not today. Had I gone through with my whimsical notion, ‘twould have made a good – dare I say, even legendary? – April Fool’s Day prank.
You gotta love a day that is devoted to honoring and encouraging practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks both well- and feebly played.
The origins of April Fools Day’s are not completely agreed upon by historians, and have been variously attributed. What is agreed upon is that many cultures, going back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, have set aside days for celebrating jokes and pranksters. Perhaps, as some people have speculated, there’s just something about the day’s timing – the fading of winter and the blooming of spring – which lends itself to the observance of light-hearted frivolity.
I can recall only a few of the pranks I’ve played on friends, family and co-workers over the years. The memories are silly but fond, and include:
* Sneaking a package of Hydrox cookies [1] from the family snack drawer and replacing all the cream fillings in the second row of cookies with toothpaste.
* Showing two positive pregnancy test dipsticks to a newbie Planned Parenthood co-worker and telling her I was pregnant with twins.
* Adding just a couple of drops of blue food coloring to the carton of nonfat milk in my parent’s refrigerator.
* Calling my father at his office and convincing him (if only temporarily) that someone had bought a raffle ticket in his name for the local animal shelter’s fundraising event, he’d won the raffle, and could he please let the shelter know when he was coming to claim his prize: an English Mastiff and a week’s supply – a 100 lb. bag of kibble – of the dog’s food. [2]
“I don’t get it – why would that be funny?”
* Swapping my and my siblings’ framed high school graduation pictures, which hung in my parent’s hallway, with pictures of the members of Led Zeppelin.
* Replacing the hard-boiled egg in my sister’s school lunch bag with a raw egg.
* Cutting my finger, smearing my blood on the scissors in co-worker Roger’s cubicle, leaving a note on my computer saying I had been threatened by Roger and feared for my life, then faking my own death and leaving town.
Oops, that’s right – I never got around to implementing the last one.
As pleasurable as it is to pull off an epic prank, it can be equally fun, IMHO, to have a great prank played on your own self. I hope y’all have a Happy April Fools’ Day…and I hope that I do not regret having made that previous declaration.
* * *
Speaking of foolery…
Department Of Uh, Since You’ve Asked, That Would Be, “No”
Last Sunday a FB friend began her post thusly:
Happy Easter, everyone! Can I share what it means to me?
FBF went on to – surprise! – offer her testimony for Jesus, without waiting for an answer to her question.
* * *
Department Of Back To The Future
Department Of After 35 Years The Spark Is Still There
Dateline: a recent Sunday night, friend over for dinner. I’d asked MH to choose some background music. When the Fiona Apple song Under the Table came on, MH turned to moiself and said, “This song always makes me think of you.”
I didn’t recall the song, but after listening to the lyrics, I appreciated his comment.
♫ I would beg to disagree, but begging disagrees with me…
So when they say something that makes me start to simmer
That fancy wine won’t put this fire out, oh
Kick me under the table all you want
I won’t shut up; I won’t shut up
Kick me under the table all you want
I won’t shut up; I won’t shut up… ♫
* * *
Department Of Analogy Of The Week
Dateline: late last week, listening to the most recent episode of Unexplainable, the science podcast which “explores scientific mysteries, unanswered questions, and all the things we learn by diving into the unknown.”
In this “Your questions, unexplained” episode, the podcast hosts consulted various scientific researchers to help them answer questions the podcast listeners had on three topics: sleepwalking, déjà vu, and the Earth’s magnetic field. For the segment on the memory phenomenon known as déjà vu, the hosts interviewed Scottish cognitive science and neuroscience researcher Akira O’Connor. O’Connor got my attention with a memorable analogy. Among scientists who study the phenomenon, O’Connor said, theories about déjà vu are like toothbrushes:
“Everybody’s got one, but nobody wants to use anybody else’s.”
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [3]
( Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian ®
as created/played by Andrew Bradley and Deven Green )
* * *
May you start planning right now for next year’s April Fools Day;
May you appreciate a song that someone says reminds them of you;
May you be forewarned: if you kick me under the table, I won’t shut up;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Anyone else remember the precursor (and competitor) to Oreos?
[2] My sisters making muffled barking sounds to approximate background animal shelter noise was a great help in pulling off this prank.
[3] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
