April Fool's Day

 I read this humorous post by a local newspaper columnist, from The Arizona Republic.  I think you'll like it too.

 

Karina Bland's column, My So-Called Midlife

"Mom is no fool when it comes to pulling pranks"

Last year on April Fools' Day, I covered one side of my 11-year-old's bunk bed in plastic wrap - while he was asleep in it - careful not to step barefooted on any of the Legos scattered on the carpet, lest my screams give me away. I then called from the doorway that he was late for school. Sawyer bolted out of bed, face-first into a clear wall of plastic.
He bounced backward like a fish bumping up against the side of his glass bowl. Then he started to laugh. He squeezed himself out of the crack near the mattress, careful not to ruin my work, so he could show his friends later.
"That was so good, Mom," he said over breakfast, shaking his head in admiration. He was still laughing.

It's a good thing, because he comes from a family of practical jokers.

One year, my dad bought dozens of helium-filled balloons, all pink, and secretly packed my uncle's van full of them. In an act of finely honed sibling retaliation, my uncle later planted a series of white poster-board signs reading "Chicken Farm" along the route to my dad's house in Laveen and then left 100 baby chicks in the side pasture. (We ate a lot of eggs that year.)

The brothers were masters at their craft; putting something over on an adult can be tricky. But kids, trusting little souls that they are, are easy marks.
My son was in preschool when I started pulling pranks on April Fools' Day. He was 3 when I took meatloaf cupcakes, frosted with pink mashed potatoes, to his class at snack time. One bite in, little Kevin Goddard called me on it: "Hey, you're trickin' us!" The kids ate them anyway - and asked for more.

The next year, I bored holes in apples and stuffed gummy worms inside. Sawyer was thrilled. He kept his apple in a sealable bag until it turned to mush.
In years that followed, I basted the arm holes of his T-shirt closed and made red Jell-O set in a drinking glass with a straw in it. When Sawyer was 7, I sewed a stack of his underwear together, putting a few stitches at the side seams, so that when he pulled the top pair out of the drawer, a dozen followed like linked sausages.
I've frozen his morning Ovaltine, tucked plastic cockroaches into his lunchbox and molded baby peas out of Laffy Taffy at dinner.

He never knows exactly what's coming, but he keeps an eye on the calendar. As April 1 approaches, Sawyer gets twitchy with anticipation, on guard for green-tinged milk on his cereal, or finding his closet empty, forcing him to consider going to school in his pajamas. He says he likes the pranks because they are unexpected and funny.
"Are you thinking of something, Mom?" Sawyer asked me a few days ago. "Do you have any ideas?"
Oh, yeah. I've got plans. But I've also got limits.

The pranks have to be harmless and fun. I don't tell him that we're going to Disneyland and then holler, "April Fools!" That would be mean. We talk about how the wrong jokes might result in hurt feelings, damaged property or injury. And no one likes to be scared in their own home, so there's no jumping out of closets or anything like that.

I pull these pranks because I want my son to be able to take a joke and laugh at himself. If Sawyer ever falls on his face in the crowded courtyard at school, I want him to be able to pick himself up and laugh it off.
He already has a great sense of humor. Some days, with his one-liners, it's like I'm living with Conan O'Brien. As I protectively watched him walk across the street and three houses down to a friend's house recently, Sawyer, walking backward, called to me, "It's not like I'm going to come under sniper fire, Mom."
He made me laugh - and go inside.

I think kids who have a strong sense of humor tend to have a more positive outlook on life. They seem better able to handle their own quirks and are more tolerant of others. And kids who can laugh at their own mistakes are better equipped to handle teasing, bullies and other adversities of childhood, big and small.
Maybe Sawyer will be more resilient as he grows up. Maybe he won't take himself too seriously and his life will be happier because of it.

But if I'm completely honest, there's one other aspect of this.
On April Fools' Day, I get to be the fun mom, not just the enforcer of bedtime and force-feeder of vegetables. I get to be the one fooling around instead of the one saying, "No." I get to make my kid laugh.
When Sawyer recounts for his friends how we glued coins to the sidewalk out front and then giggled when neighborhood kids, and even our postman, tried to pick them up - and one of his friends grumbles, "My parents are boring" - I am pleased with myself.

This year, I was considering setting all the clocks ahead an hour and rushing Sawyer out of bed to get ready for school. No time for breakfast. And as I'd push him to the car, I'd ask him to tell me what time it was. "How late are we?" I'd squeal. And when he realized we were actually way too early, I'd take him to IHOP for pancakes before school.

For the kids in my carpool, I thought about pretending to take a call from school and then telling them that classes were canceled because of a power outage. I could even turn the car around and start back toward home. (Last year, I pulled over to the side of the road, feigning that I had run out of gas. Ah, the sweet sound of kids yelling, "Very funny!")

But I'm prepared for retaliation. Sawyer already has filled the salt shaker with sugar and set up motion-sensor alarms from his spy kit that sound off when I go into the bathroom. He tries to get me with a whoopee cushion, but it is bright green and the size of a frying pan, so I'm onto it.
One day, I figure I'll wake up with a Magic Marker mustache. Until then, though, I'm on the prowl for a few dozen pink balloons.



Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com.