April Fool’s Day, Fool

When I was little, I used to play April Fool’s Day pranks on my family.  They would range from the little “Mom, come quick!! There’s a huge spider in the baththub!” to more elaborate jokes as I got older. I would then hear the same damn story from my mom every year. She was such a kill joy.

“Vickie, did you ever hear the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?” 

And then she would proceed to tell me, every freaking year, the story about how a stupid shepherd boy cried “Wolf” too many times and when a wolf really did appear, no one would believe him. And the wolf ate up the whole flock of sheep. I only had one question for my mom….every year.

“Why didn’t the wolf eat the boy?”

That’s when I would get sent to my room. I cry foul, though. I thought that was a very good question. Okay. Say a little shepherd boy is sitting against a tree, watching sheep. Up creeps a wolf.  Shouldn’t the wolf attack the kid first? And this was my reasoning. Sheep have a lot of fur and if the wolf would try to eat it, there would be a lot of fur in its mouth. But, eating a boy would be easy. No fur, just right to the body. I knew that when I was young. But, then again, maybe wolves don’t think humans are tasty. I really didn’t know. Or care. I was just pulling an April Fool’s joke, dammit.

My mom would also question me about the moral of the story. I didn’t know what a “moral” was when I was very young. I did hear the word a lot at the stupid private school I went to. Sister Maria at the Sacred Heart of Mary Mary Quite Contrary Academy was always using that word. I didn’t ask her what it meant either. If it was a vocabulary word, I would have taken the time to know its meaning. But, right now, I was just trying to get my mom off of her butt to come look at a fake spider on April Fool’s Day.

“So, Vickie, what is the moral of the story?”  Oh great. Here we go again. I’m was in fourth grade by now, and still had no idea.

Stare…..Stare……shrugs shoulders…………”It’s about a boy who takes care of sheep.”

“But, what is the moral of the story?”

Shit. I don’t know. “I don’t know what that means.” Finally, I said it.

“You don’t know what a “moral” is?”  My mom’s eyes got big behind her big glasses. “I have asked you every year and you are just now telling me you don’t know what a “moral” is? A “moral”  is when there is a lesson to be learned from the story. A goodness or a badness.”

Goodness or badness? Um okay. Like watching those stupid clay people, Davey and Goliath on Sunday mornings when we didn’t go to church.

“So, Vickie, what is the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?”  She was like a damn teacher. All she needed was a ruler to crack me across my knuckles.

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“That children shouldn’t watch sheep.”

“Go to your room!!”

 Now, you have to understand that I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer by no means. But, children really had no business watching sheep. They should be in school, learning what the hell a “moral” was. And, I might add that I watched Road Runner and knew that kids NEVER watched sheep. Sam the sheepdog did.

I finally wised up and decided to just concentrate on my siblings or my father on future April Fool’s Day. I was tired of hearing the damn boy crying wolf story to last me a lifetime.

Until this past week. I have a liar in my fourth grade class. He lies about everything and I catch him every time. A known liar knows another liar when she sees one.

But, I brought out my mom’s arsenal…big sigh.

“Ralph, (not his real name. Protecting the real kid from his stupidity) did you ever hear the story about The Boy Who Cried Wolf?”

Shit. I have become my mother.

Looks like the joke is on me.

D-i-v-o-r-c-e

     I have been divorced since May, 2009. I guess you could say it was a friendly divorce. We even rode together to the divorce hearing.  The judge was a little shocked. “Well, in all the time I have been doing this, I’ve never heard of the divorcing couple car- pooling to the courthouse.” But, we did. We also didn’t use lawyers, so it was quick. He even treated me to lunch at the 8th Street Confectionery after the hearing. A meatball hoagie and a divorce on the same day. Life is good.

       My ex-husband and I remain close and he still calls me a couple of times a week. So, it is nothing out of the ordinary to hear his voice on the other end of the phone line.

     One day this past spring, Magoo (my nickname for him because he can’t drive) called me with some unsettling news. He asked me if I had received a certified letter from the clerk of the circuit court. Nope, never received one.  I always seemed to get mail a day later than he did. That was normal.  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “Why?”

 Magoo told me that the letter informed us that since lawyers were not used in our divorce, part of the divorce process was not completed and the certified letter was sent to inform us that they had to render the divorce null and void. We were supposed to come back to the courthouse for a meeting with the family law judge who granted our divorce. There was silence on my end of the phone, because I was at a loss for words.  I am never at a loss for words. I could feel my blood pressure rapidly rise and I thought that my head was going to explode.

“What the f*&%????…….  Are you saying that we are still married? ………. Oh my God! ………..Read it to me!”  I couldn’t believe that a judge could be so inept to overlook protocol in a divorce proceeding. What a moron. I called her worse names.  I was a torrential ranter. My sentence structure was nothing but a long string of adjectives….

“That stupid, moronic, inept, worthless, incompetent, bumbling, absurd, insipid, lame, banal, unfit, impotent, brain-crippled, window-licking  short bus riding bitch!……” 

  He read it to me. “blah blah blah….protocol was not followed……form 425 not signed or notorized……..blah blah blah……divorced rendered null and void……must appear before Judge _____ within 30 days to begin divorce process…..”

 I was shocked.  “Are you freakin kidding me?” I looked at the clock and then asked if he wanted to meet me down at the courthouse right now. He replied, “I will come and pick you up in about 20 minutes. Vickie, this means we are still married.”

“Shit, Magoo, this is absurd!!” I was ranting and rambling and I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. I wondered if we should call the Judge’s office to find out what the hell was going on.  He said, no, we should just drive down. I asked him to read the letter to me again, one more time. He said he already read it to me once.  I didn’t give a shit. I wanted to decifer it. Tear it apart with a fine toothed combed. He went to get the letter. I guess he walked with it into another room while we were talking.

 As I was pacing, waiting for him to come back to the phone,  I stopped by my front door and just happened to look at the calendar. I just couldn’t believe that after almost a year, we found out that we were never divorced. I also found out something else.

Magoo got back on the phone. I yelled into the phone, “YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

I noticed on the calendar that it was April 1….April Fool’s Day………Damnit, he got me!

His laughter was deafening. It went on for quite a while. I let him have his fun. It was the first time he was ever able to pull an April Fool’s joke on the Queen of April Fool’s jokes.

He tried to talk through his hyena-like howling. “I am the Master!……After 30 years, I am FINALLY able to pull an April Fool’s joke on you.”  And he began cackling again. Cackling like a little school girl if I may say so.

  He must have written down some of my remarks, because he was able to regurgitate everything I had said. He was a regurgitator.

 He called me back two more times that afternoon. All I could hear was laughing. I hung up on him.  And then I smiled.

That was a good one.

Before...

After.....still smiling