Next Year

Random Musing:

I just finished reading my friend's blog. She tells of her little shy son rigging the toilet fill tube on April Fool's day. He put it just under the lid facing out, so that when the water rushes through it to fill the tank, it instead shoots water outward and soaks whoever is, well, uh, using the toilet. The cool thing was that they happened to have the missionaries over for dinner and by the time they realized that and ran to the bathroom to warn the missionary, they heard the flush. They were too late.

What a great story! So here's the musing. I decided just now that I like and I mean really like anyone who takes the time to prank people on April Fools Day. What's not to like about people who don't take life too seriously and have a little fun once a year?

We have a neighbor, who I'll just call Ray or maybe Raymond to protect his identity. This is a man with 7 children in his 50's and is a respectable scientist kind of guy. Not just kind of guy..ok, he IS a scientist. Let's just clarify that. He is a disciplined, rule following, trustworthy, hardworking man. Once a year, on April Fools, he fools a LOT of people. You just don't expect whatever prank he is going to pull.

One year, he put a for sale sign in his yard, which shocked everyone, because people just don't move out of this neighborhood very often. The next year (and this is the one I thought was the best), he sent out an email to everyone in the neighborhood supposedly from his wife, Laurie, announcing that at age 50, she was pregnant with their 8th. It was so classic as he used words like, the Lord has blessed us once again...I can't wait to experience it one more time.... Oh man, that was funny. The next year, while I was serving as Young Women's President, I get an email from Elder Holland explaining that they needed strong women such as myself to come to church headquarters and be on some board to help the brethren decide some youth issues...something like that. Those pranks made Ray go up about 5 notches on my cool-o-meter.

So this year, Brett and I were in L.A. and our kids were here in Utah. All we could think to do was to call Maddie and tell her as seriously as we could that we decided to move to this semi-scary area that she knew about and that we just had a super strong feeling that is where we were supposed to live. Did she trust us as parents? You could have driven a semi truck through the pause on her end. Well, do you trust us? She finally quietly said, Yes I trust you. When I finally told her April Fools, I think she started crying. She was so relieved.

Now, that was pretty lame, I'll concede. I have just decided that I want to be more like my friend Ray and more like my friend's son(the toilet guy) on April Fools. Next year. Mark my words...