So it’s been a good run, but this is my last column.
Gotcha.
Or, did I? Maybe not. That joke probably plays better for Anna Quindlen. Ah well, it’s not the first time I’ve had an April Fools’ prank flop.
There was the year I painstakingly cut out cartoon eyes and taped them on everything in the fridge. Absolutely no one cared.
I scraped out the sweet, creamy white Oreo filling and replaced it with toothpaste. The kids not only thought they were delicious, they argued they shouldn’t have to brush their teeth after eating them.
Dried macaroni noodles wedged beneath the toilet seat so that when anyone sat on it, there’d be a disturbing cracking sound? Lamest joke of all. Nobody noticed. Here’s the thing: People are so preoccupied with how badly they need to go first thing in the morning that they aren’t paying attention to anything else, so toilet tricks are a total ... waste.
Can you tell I adore April Fools’? Love it.
And, even better, it seems to be the one area in parenting where I’m actually making headway. Raising children is all about leading by example and the kids are finally catching on to how important it is to pull a really good prank. Or 10.
Last year, I got teary when I saw how the little grasshoppers had bested their teacher.
The shenanigans flew fast and furious. The bespectacled face of Tina Belcher — from family favorite TV show “Bob’s Burgers” — showed up taped to all our photos and artwork, the milk was dyed blue, the apple juice was in the orange juice container and vice versa, which isn’t super clever but HOLY COW NO. 3 FOUND THE FUNNEL, not that he used it particularly effectively because the floor was so sticky that I lost a flipflop. The littlest prankster even got up at 3:45 in the a of m to do his handiwork, swapping his big sister’s dresser drawers, TPing a bedroom, and even slipping fake barf into a skillet.
And the créme de la créme, the crown jewel, the pièce de résistance, the cream of the crap, I mean, crop: On a day when I sent a ton of text messages for work and to a teacher, every time I typed the word “the” into my phone, it came up “mad pooper.” Of course, my fingers were flying so fast that I failed to notice the discrepancy until after I hit “send.” I thought I was losing my mind. Then, I realized: Someone waaaaay more tech savvy than I got ahold of my phone. Well played, No. 1, aka Mad Pooper. Well. Played.
Sniff. I have never been prouder.
And, I can think of no better time to share how incredibly happy and thankful I am that No. 4 will grow up with such amazing siblings as role models and, more than that, you’re all old enough to babysit and, even more than that, change diapers.
