April Fooler

I have never been the greatest April Fool. Mind you, I can be a fool at any time of the year, but as far as perpetrating a good April Fool's joke I have come up a bit short. Nothing that ever really compared to what I considered the standard: my mom calling to the three kids early in the morning, "Snow! It's snowing, kids, run and look!"

My sister, brother, and I ran to the living room shutters and threw them upon . . . to gaze on a sunshiny and blue sky morning. It was April 1 and we lived in San Jose, California. If we had given even a moment for rational consideration we would not have fallen for it. But we were young, sleepy, and Mom was usually a trustworthy sort, so we ran, and looked, and were disappointed, and then laughed. If I remember it practically forty years later you know it must have been good.

I probably pranked my kids when they were young, but nothing really comes to mind. Which makes them not memorable. The one I do remember was when a friend and I taught kindergarten in adjoining rooms back around 2006. I was in Room 13 and Aimee was in Room 14 but we taped paper over those numbers on the classroom doors and wrote the other number. We swapped the pupils' pencil boxes and a few other items to give the semblance of our own rooms.

When the morning bell rang, we opened each other's door and looked at each other's students. I said, "Mrs. Kalivoda is over there" and pointed down to my classroom. Her students scampered to her as mine walked toward me with a thousand questions. The parents looked a bit confused as well.

Escorting the students inside, I pretended that nothing was the matter and proved my thesis by pointing out their pencil boxes. Then I passed out their morning work and told them to get busy. Through the opening to Room 13 we could see Aimee was doing the same thing with her students.

The parents figured it out, laughed, and left. Most of them figured it out. I think a few truly thought we had changed classrooms. Aimee and I continued the joke for a while, with morning read-alouds in the wrong rooms. Then we got back to normal.

Proof that it was successful and memorable: a sixth grader who experienced that joke-of-jokes six years ago just brought it up, telling me how funny it was. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all the proof I need.