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The first was Sally. Every year I play a harmless, little trick on my children to surprise them and make them laugh.
But I've been known to get it wrong before. Like when Huckle was in third grade and I put a plastic bug in his lunch bag. Even though it was fake (and clean, and not actually touching any food), Huckle was so grossed out that he couldn't get himself to eat so much as a bite. Now he thinks it's funny, but at the time I felt terrible when my boy came home hungry.
This year I bought an Easter egg dying kit with colored tablets. On the morning of April 1, while Huckle and Sally ate breakfast and wondered aloud what I would do to their lunches (last year I put soda in their water bottles), I sneaked into their bathroom, unscrewed the aerators of their faucets, and then re-screwed them with colored tablets hidden inside -- red in Huckle's (because he thinks blood is wonderfully gory) and green in Sally's (because she thinks blood is horribly gory).
Huckle went up to brush his teeth first. I "folded laundry" outside the bathroom door until I heard a surprised "Hey!" and then a "Mo-ooooom" said in a smiling voice. "That's a good one, Mom." Red water from his faucet. Got him!
Sally came upstairs to find out why her brother was laughing and to brush her teeth. She wasn't happy that he clearly knew something she didn't. (Note to self: that's a bad start right there.)
Sally's "hey!" sounded indignant. Her "Mo-ooooom!" sounded accusing. Huckle standing there laughing only made matters worse. "Mom, you made my toothbrush turn green!" she cried.
"That's funny," said Huckle helpfully.
"No it's NOT!" yelled Sally. "Everybody's making fun of me!"
The green washed off Sally's toothbrush; would her anger wash off too? Maybe she would find it funny some day, like Huckle and the lunch bug?
It hardly mattered since it wasn't funny at that moment or for the entire car ride to school, with Sally fuming in the back seat. Two strikes and I'm out, I thought. No more April Fools for me! What could be worse than making someone cry when you meant to make them laugh?
But I had already set another, bigger April Fools Day prank into motion...
Sally's third-grade teacher is a lovely woman gifted in encouraging her students. Every so often she fills out a special form called a Student Success Report to report a student's extra act of kindness or studiousness or neatness. "Sally truly impressed me with the effort she applied to her spelling practice..." a recent report noted. One copy gets signed and returned to the teacher; the other copy gets taped to our refrigerator door. A Success Report makes Sally's day.
Toward the end of March, as I closed the refrigerator door, I had an idea -- I would duplicate the success report but change it to a Teacher Success Report. The result looked pleasingly authentic. A PDF file of my fake was sent to every student in the class, so they and their parents could fill it out and return it on April 1. The instructions were to encourage the teacher, a hard-working woman with a toddler and twin infants at home and a room full of high-energy third graders at school.
After I dropped off a happy Huckle and steaming Sally at school on April 1, I thought about the bigger, more public prank I had set in motion. Ugh. If my little, harmless-seeming prank on the kids could go wrong, would the bigger prank go even more wrong? Would the kids write thoughtless notes to their nice teacher? Would the parents use the form to air hidden grievances? Had I committed forgery by copying the success report??
A sense of foreboding with lots of second guessing...
I found out later that the prank worked better than expected. As the students filed into the classroom, the teacher was handed Success Report and after Success Report until she held a stack of papers, each filled with kind words about her successes. The students were delighted to be in on this secret and took the task seriously.
And that's where the second set of tears enters into the story: the teacher was so touched by the outpouring of love from her class and their parents that she cried. An added bonus: the children saw how much their encouragement meant to their teacher, and they positively glowed at her response.
On April 2, a new Success Report appeared on our refrigerator. It's a Parent Success Report created by Sally. It commends me for "making up this idea for teachers."My lesson? Pranks can have unexpected results. Some good, some bad. Even a well-meaning prank is a risk. But some risks pay off big.
I'm not sure how, or if, I'll celebrate April 1 next year. Of course, it's a silly holiday. But silly can be sweet, and sweet can be wonderful.
Sometimes...
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