How My Kids Did Their Grandma Proud

My family is a bunch of pranksters.  I blame it on my Mom.  She was always up for a good joke and she was darn creative about it.

So naturally, this passed down to me and when the kids were young I would try to come up with little pranks to play on them on April 1st.  One year I was fortunate enough to have this day fall on a Saturday.  I don’t remember how old they were, just that they were old enough to stay up late on Friday night with no badgering from me to get to bed.

Saturday morning I went into their rooms at 7 am and announced in my most perfect panic stricken Mother voice, “Girls, it’s 7 am… you’re going to be late for the bus!”  I never saw 2 kids fly out of bed so fast!

It was so hard to keep my poker face, and I had to keep going into my bedroom to stop my giggles from giving me away.  In 10 minutes flat they were running down the stairs preparing to head out the door to the bus stop.  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, I calmly and quietly said “April Fool.”  If daggers could fly out of eyeballs, I would have been dead.

They didn’t much care for my little prank, but on that day a seed was planted that would prove to be their revenge.

One year later I was at my-then job as an Assistant Manager at the local Hardees.  We were just preparing for the noon rush when the phone rang.  When I answered it, my oldest was on the other end, all out of breath and panic in her voice.  She was talking a mile a minute and I was trying to calm her down so that I could find out what was wrong.  When I finally got her to stop the hysterical crying that had consumed her, she announced that Dad had been changing a tire on the truck and the jack fell out from underneath it.  He was trapped and they didn’t know what to do.  I think I actually went pale.

I was concentrating so hard on my daughter that I hadn’t noticed that I had drawn a crowd of co-workers listening in on the conversation and trying to figure out what was going on.  Finally a calm face appeared before me, looked me straight in the eyes and gave me some words of wisdom:  “Sandy, it’s April Foods Day.”  I think my jaw hit the floor.  The laughter on the other end of the phone confirmed this wise person’s words and at that moment I knew only one thing:  my kids had sought their revenge and executed the perfect prank on their Mother.  They timed it in such a way that they knew I would be busy and not be able to put 2 + 2 together.

They did their Grandma proud.  That was also the last year that any pranks were pulled on April Fools Day.  I just don’t think that I could take another one like that.

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Yes, I’m posting this on April 2nd because I didn’t want to give my family any ideas.