April 1: April Fool's Day!

I was in the seventh grade when I came up with what I thought would be a fantastic April Fool's Day prank to play on my parents. I had always loved the idea of pulling off a practical joke on someone but everything I could think of seemed a little unrealistic or far fetched.

I had considered filling the shower head with Kool-Aid powder with the hopes of the water mixing with the powder and causing it to rain purple, red, or orange juice all over my unsuspecting sister. I didn't think it would have any lasting effect, but I wasn't 100 percent sure that it wouldn't dye her hair and/or skin so I nixed the idea. My only other idea was to buy a bunch of balloons, inflate each one, and carefully place them on the floor of my parents' room while they slept. My goal was to pack the balloons in so tightly that when they awoke in their groggy state, they would be jolted awake with every balloon-popping step they took. Like I said, the idea was a little far fetched.

The prank that I decided to go with took some coercing of my homeroom teacher. She was a pretty fun lady so she would have been perfect to pull the joke off. As soon as the last bell of the day rang, I ran to my first period class instead of to the bus loop, in hopes that my teacher would still be there. I burst through the door to find her cleaning up the lesson from her last lecture. Out of breath and giddy with excitement, I explained to her that I wanted her to write me a fake referral to bring home to my parents. Back then, teachers were constantly calling my mom letting her know that I was disruptive in class and that I was a class clown. Hard to believe, right? I didn't have a reason for my referral made up, but my teacher came to the rescue. "What if I write that you told me to 'F-off?'" Brilliant! She then wrote a short descriptive of the made-up story as I imagined my parents' reactions. My teacher signed and dated the referral and I enthusiastically thanked her for being such a cool person before I ran out to get on the bus home.

However, getting on the bus home was my intention and not my reality. I sprinted through the school hallways and up the grassy hill towards the bus circle just in time to see the 764 yellow bus make its U-Turn from the parallel driveway and on to the main road to start its afternoon drop offs. I didn't miss a bus in the morning due to taking too long to get ready. Instead, I missed the bus that waits for school to let out. No one ever misses that bus. I felt like a fool.

It took me what seemed like days to walk the five miles from my junior high to my house. I didn't live on a flat suburban street either, mind you. I had to walk up the mountainous, windy Alpine roads without sidewalks and where traffic raced around corners without giving any thought to punk seventh graders. It was a five mile hike up a mountain; and all for a stupid April Fool's prank. This had better be worth it, I thought.

When my mom got home from work, I did my best to act ashamed of myself as I handed her the slip that she was "supposed to sign and return." As she read over my teacher's scrawl, I stared up at my mom watching her every movement and suppressing a burst of laughter.

Remember when you would get in trouble and your parents would say something like, "I'm not mad at you. I'm disappointed." It was that last word that hurt more than anything. You would have preferred if they were mad at you, but the fact that you had let them down was punishment enough. That's kind of how this felt. My mom didn't give any reaction. She didn't say anything. She just shook her head slowly and put the slip down on the counter where my dad would be parking his lunch box within the hour. Still without saying anything, she turned and walked away in preparation for the nightly chores.

I followed her and told her it was just a joke. I tried the "April Fools!" line with no avail. She wasn't entertained at all. She didn't find the humor in it. "Okay," I thought. "Maybe she had a bad day, but the cool thing about having two parents living at home was that I had a second chance. Surely, Dad would think this was hilarious!"

It was the first time I heard my dad use the F-word. "Let me get this straight," he said after reading the slip upon entering the kitchen. "You told your teacher to go f*ck herself?" Never had I heard the "F" sound so vulgar. The "ck" was enunciated with so much hate and aggression that I realized instantly that the prank was not as funny as I had planned.

Suffice it to say, the night was a quiet one at the Roesler residence. Neither parent found any humor in a joke that was slightly different from all of the real calls they had received explaining that their son had, yet again, disrupted the class with his disrespectful attempts to causing laughter. I can't remember if I told my parents that I had missed the school bus in the process of creating this elaborate hoax, but when all was said and done, the joke was clearly on me.