The only real April Fools' joke I ever played was one I played by accident. Actually, it was never intended to be a prank at all, and it was only luck that it happened around this time of the year. Perhaps it was fate. And it started in church.
It started out as a teeny tiny joke, a little funny thing that was innocent and isolated. I was sitting during the Sunday service with my friend Laura. We were eleven years old. No, scratch that. I was eleven, she was ten. She was also gullible.
It started during the Prayer, denoted as a proper noun because it was the Prayer, the long one in the middle where the preacher tells God what we would all say if we went to school and learned to pray like professionals. It was a long prayer, and at that point in my life, I considered myself to be very grown-up if I managed to keep my eyes closed and my head bowed the whole time. Sometimes I tried harder than others.
I wasn't trying very hard this time. But Laura was, so I was bored. So I picked up a pen and scrawled out a message on the back of that day's bulletin. In my messiest handwriting, I wrote
My name is Jerri. I was murdered in 1937.
No, I don't know why. But when the prayer was all over, Laura stared at the message in awe because there were only two people in the pew, and I said I didn't do it. Laura's conclusion? There was a ghost, when the correct conclusion was that I was a dirty liar. We examined the note carefully as a sign from beyond the grave. The trouble was, I had done too good of a job with the messy handwriting bit. It took her about five minutes to figure out the word "murdered", and it was all I could do not to tell her what it said. After all, I was supposed to not know what it said, either. It was my finest performance.
When I wrote the message, I assumed Laura would take one look and call me out on it. Because, really. But then she didn't, and I couldn't let go of what turned out to be this great gag. And so I carried it further. I would take the pen cap and hide it when she wasn't looking, like in one of the shoes she had taken off because they made her feet hurt or in her gaping open coat pocket. And she bought it. Apparently, you gain a lot of insight between the ages of ten and eleven, and poor Laura was at a disadvantage.
And then it wasn't Sunday anymore, but Monday, because that's what comes next. And I did it at school, too. We had one class together, and I had a pre-written note that I snuck into Laura's pocket. God bless those gaping pockets.
A little side-plot here: Laura and I had been going to the school guidance counselor the previous week because we were worried about a friend of ours who had been smoking cigarettes. And we were going to see the counselor again that week, and Laura wanted to bring up the ghost issue. I argued against it, obviously because I foresaw my being caught as a result of this action. But my arguments were ineffective. The counselor, Mrs. Mackey I think her name was, took it all in very nicely without giving an inkling of her true feelings, which were probably that we were both idiots.
But our next meeting with the counselor, now that one happened to land on that magical date of April 1st. I swear I didn't plan it that way, but I suppose I haven't given very good reasons for you to believe anything I say here. We went to see Mrs. Mackey, and she gave us her very astute conclusions: that there were two people in the pew, and one of them didn't have the guile to pull off such a stunt.
I was trapped, and I didn't know how to come out of it gracefully. They were going to make me swear on the Bible, which to an eleven year old brought up in the Methodist Church, that is a terrifying thing indeed. And so, in a fit of giggles, I put my hand on the Bible and said "April Fools!"
And the April Fools' joke that wasn't even supposed to be one ended. Since it was such a fabulous success, and I wasn't even trying, I have since retired from the April Fools business. Just to be fair to everyone else.
Plus, Laura is twenty now, and I'm not sure if I could get away with anything.
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