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The April Fool
Looking back now, I can admit that perhaps I had grown a little too confident. The dreaded April 1st was nearly over and I had fallen for nothing. To my surprise, no one had even seriously tried. My daughter, who is six, did come up to me and make some absurd claim (I can’t even remember what it was), giggling all the while. She was no match for me and I squelched it right away. She just kept on giggling despite her abject failure.
My wife’s brother had stopped by for a visit with his wife and kids, my nefarious nephews, on whom I had kept a very close watch all evening. After dinner, which came and went with no dribble cups, hidden laxatives, or shaving cream pies, I was standing in the kitchen, thinking it would be smooth sailing for the rest of the evening, when one of my nephews, Tucker, age 12, came up to me and said, “Hey Uncle D.A., your shoe’s untied.”
In a moment like a flash of lightning, my reflexes betrayed me. Before my conscious mind could even process Tucker’s words, my chin began to drop. I felt a pang of horror seize my gut before my eyes even got to my feet, my dilatory mind knowing those eyes would not see untied laces, knowing they would not see laces at all, but rather tightly sealed velcro straps atop my shoes, shoes which I had taken some pains to find, having made certain sacrifices in style and comfort, to prevent just this sort of assault on my dignity.
The smug grin on Tucker’s face, the laughter of the adults in the room — the adults! — sent me running out to the porch. As I fled I heard my brother-in-law, short of breath between laughs, say, “He doesn’t even have laces!”
I pulled a pencil from my man-purse and snapped it in half. I slammed myself down on the porch swing and began rocking back and forth. I had gotten so close! Year after year, humiliated by children, and there I was on the brink of victory! And then I blew it.
The neighbor across the street was digging in his yard for some unfathomable reason, nearly as unfathomable as the fact that he spells his name with two r’s. He looked over and, apparently noticing my flustered state, asked, “Something wrong?”
“Not today, Garry!” I sputtered. “You know what day it is! Go back to your… ludicrous digging! ….Aarrghgh.”
Garry said nothing but gave me that look, that “Oh, yeah. It’s April Fool’s Day” look. I wanted to tar and feather him.
Tucker! That little son-of-a…actually his mother, Brenda, was quite nice, though I’m sure she laughed with all the rest of them. I pulled a second pencil from the man purse and snapped it in half, then closed my eyes to concentrate. How to recover from this? Maybe I could say I was in on it? Helping little Tucker get some of the positive attention he has long craved? Helping him overcome the fact that he was born with what was obviously a full-sized thumb instead of a pinkie toe on his left foot. Just being a good, compassionate uncle.
Oh, but they’d never buy it. The fact was Tucker was proud of his thumb-toe. And of course, he would deny I had any involvement. Twelve-year-olds have no sense of charity, no feelings of empathy. Every single one of them is a jerk. I took half of a previously broken pencil and snapped it in half.
How does a grown man get revenge on a 12-year-old boy, I wondered. It’s not done in polite society, I told myself. I would have to wait. In five years and four months, I calculated, Tucker would turn 18. As I rocked the swing back and forth, I imagined the day of my revenge. Perhaps I would do it right during his 18th birthday party, with all his friends gathered around, and with him still having that teenage need to look tough in front of everyone. I imagined him opening my present, getting some spring-loaded novelty right in the face. He’d scream and fall back, maybe even turn over his chair. Everyone would laugh uproariously, and me loudest of all. And then he would be the one fleeing the room.
My fantasy was interrupted by the sound of the screen door opening. Evil Tucker, his father, and his little brother passed by, saying good night as they descended the porch steps and walked out to their minivan. As his father exchanged pleasantries with Garry, who stood leaning against his shovel, Tucker gave me another smug grin and then stepped into the van.
For the first time, I noticed a small cherry tree, laying in Garry’s yard and waiting to be placed in its new home. I made a mental note to periodically steal cherries from the tree once it matured. The screen door opened again. This time it was Brenda. As she passed me, she lightly touched my arm and said, “Thanks for being such a good sport every year. You always make them so happy. I think you’re their favorite uncle.”
I was dumbstruck. My reflexes again made me look ridiculous. I blinked and shook my head, then exhaled with a pathetic, gaspy “heh..” Brenda looked down at me for another moment, looking a bit puzzled when she saw the broken pencils.
“I sat on them,” I said, trying to think up some explanation.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “Did the boys do that, too?”
“No, no,” I said. “I just left them in my back pocket. Didn’t realize it when I sat down.” Even as I said it, I knew it was likely the strangest lie I ever told.
Brenda smiled and continued on to the van. I felt a sense of relief hit me like a warm, gentle, wave. So, I had not looked like such a fool to everyone after all. I had not been their unwitting clown all these years. To them, I was just going along with it. I was always just going along with it. Just an easy-going guy doing what easy-going guys do.
My memory called up images of the humiliating moments of years gone by — the looks of ridicule on everyone’s faces, the smirks, the head shakes, seeing all those eye rolls as I fell for the same trick twice, or even three times, in the same day. Maybe all of those awful looks were only in my head. Maybe they never happened! Just my insecurities playing jokes on my fragile self-regard. And just tonight, was that really a smug grin on Tucker’s face, or was it a smile of loving appreciation? It was if a new light had descended on the world, and it was golden and happy. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
I opened them to see Garry, sweaty and disgusting from his inane laboring, go into his house, probably to get a drink of water. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, I felt compelled to remove my velcro shoes. I took them off and walked barefoot across the street, carrying them with me. Glancing to make sure Garry was still inside, I dropped my shoes into the hole he had dug, and then covered them with some loose dirt. Almost as an afterthought, I dropped in the pencil pieces, too. Later that evening, I sat in the kitchen and looked out the window. The sun had gone down and a gentle rain was falling but, somehow, everything seemed brighter. After basking in the glow of my new world for a little while longer, I went to bed happy.
The next morning, I found my velcro shoes and pencils, now caked with mud, in my mailbox, with a note that said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Not a thing, Garry,” I thought. “Not one thing.”
Published in Humor
“I sat on them” HAHAHAHAHA! Hilarious writing.
Oh, and thanks for making me laugh when I was in a bad mood. You made it go away.
You’re welcome! Glad to help.
Don’t take your revenge at his birthday party, do it the first time you meet his first girlfriend.
A pretty good movie with Jack Lemon and Catherine Deneuve.
Now that was funny! Thanks for sharing your humiliation.
Thanks! Just to clarify though, to save my reputation, this was 95% fiction. It’s true I did recently fall for the shoe’s untied gag – but my shoes did have laces. Also, I do not have a man-purse.
Haha! The man-purse was the tipoff for me.
Mister D.A.:
I would have kept this to four words, so that you could get back to sending bad people up the river, but
The idea of a writer this clever being, at the same time, goofy enough to carry a man-purse is considered and immediately rejected, establishing the genre for the rest of the story: we knew at that moment, if not before, that were in Babylon Beeland.
I had thought the kernel of truth might be your nephew Tucker and the shoelace gag. I was kind of hoping you had a man-purse and a neighbor Garry who dug ludicrous holes.
That was brilliantly over the top. What fun.
Is there such a thing?
They were very big in the 70s, among straight men. The disco scene.
Hm. I was around in the 70’s and never saw one. But then, I felt about disco the way Bob Seger did. Yeah, I’ve been pretty unhip my whole life.
Well done. After we moved to Italy I saw my first man bag. They were (are?) popular all over Europe. Now we call them fanny packs and they aren’t nearly as elegant. But much cheaper.
D.A., you are amazing! You are such an awesome storyteller. And those additions you made–well done! Thanks so much for making me smile!
Does your neighbor really have two r’s to spell Gary?
Well, no. I’m not sure where that idea came from. Just seemed like the narrator needed another irrational reason to despise his neighbor. Seems like I’ve seen someone spell it that way before, but I can’t remember who. Somebody famous I think.
It was a nice touch. Great post!
Both Shandling and Marshall.
It was where they kept their Binaca.
(and their cocaine)
Both true.