April Fool's Blues

Why, calendar? Why?

Every year, the first day of April comes and every year, my gullibility is shown to the world. Most years, I take my punishment and simply shrug sheepishly at the resounding chorus of "April Fooooooooooool's!!!" after a clever prank. But today featured one after another like I was riding a line of dominoes as each one fell and spit me out onto the next.

Today was kind of like that April Fool's Day I can still remember that happened many years ago, when I was only five or six years old. My mom convinced me that I would be late for school while I was busy downstairs watching Peter Pan for probably the 40th time that week. I hurriedly ran up the stairs, devastated I couldn't keep watching my boy Pan and all flustered that I'd be in trouble somehow. After all the effort, my mom let the truth shine through: it was Saturday. Ouch.

April Fool's '09 was different, however. I was getting it from all angles.

After a long night of laundry, homework, and college life, I set my alarm for 6:20am, bright and early for my weekly squash game at the Rec Center. It didn't go off until 6:47! Damn those machines that will one day rule the world if I-Robot is to be believed (and really, who's going to question Will Smith at any time, let alone when he's wearing these?).

While I somehow managed to get through an hour of squash without any tomfoolery, when I came back to my room I was blasted once again. I was quickly perusing my usual favorites on web before heading to class and saw this on my favorite blog, A2Y. The story was believable enough and I was shocked and saddened and panicked...then he too hits me with the catch phrase of the day. Oh, come on! Not you too, internet! I can't win.

And it continued on into my first class of the day, Spanish. I was still groggy from only having four hours of sleep and my friend Joe, who I sit next to most days, hit me while I was down. I was the sedated bear to his poking stick. A brief reenactment:

Cam: "Hey Joe, what's up?"
Joe: "Nothin' man, just feeling pretty tired. Didn't sleep too well with all the sirens."
Cam, originally not paying attention, quickly perks up: "What sirens?"
Joe, acting way too intense for 10am, is taken abak: "Where have you been man? There was a huge fire; half of Kingsbury burnt down! I thought you would've been the first to hear about it, being with the paper and all."
Cam: "What? Holy shi--(Joe smirks, losing his credibility)-- oh you son of a bitch."
Joe: "April Foooooool's!!"

Ugh. Damn you, journalistic instincts that made me pull out my phone and nearly text half the people I know so we could be on the breaking news as soon as possible. Admittedly, the prank was pretty tame but it made me feel immediately awake and got the adrenaline going for a second before turning to the fuzzy feeling of humiliation once more. Inevitably burned like a marshmallow around a campfire.

The rest of the day featured more false news that I ate right up and even a non-April Fool's prank that I thought I was ready for. In my Editing class, we have these short student presentations where you teach a tricky snippet of grammar to the rest of the class (like semicolons, how to avoid jargon, etc.). But the key thing everyone is supposed to do is bring in some kind of small candy/delicious sugary snack for everyone to have like bite-size chocolates or cookies or whatever. And I was sure Phil, the kid who presented today, was just foolin' when he said he didn't have something for us. He wasn't. Triumph to turmoil.

There's not much else to report on; I was just feeling April Fool's Blues today and wanted to share. I think the calendar chooses April juuust so it can catch us right as we're coming out of winter-hibernation mode: our weakest point as a society. Only the eager beavers and tricky bastards are the ones who can come up with any pranks and the rest of us are left to suffer! I mean, I have certainly pulled some pranks of my own and am by all means a hypocrite...but it's your fault you're still reading this useless post! But since you have, you'll be rewarded below with the video of the day. Goodnight.