Happy April's Fool Day!

April Fool Day, or All Fools' Day. The First of April, when it is an almost universal custom throughout the world to play more or less amiably asinine tricks upon one's neighbor. Of the origin of this custom nothing positive is known. Here's one story about how this Husband was determined to fool his wife on April the 1st.

Charlie arose shortly before his wife and waited until he saw her stirring.

Quickly he stood up next to the bed and grabbed his chest moaning loudly. He watched for her reaction out the corner of his eye.

She yawned and stretched.

Charlie moaned louder, staggered about, crying out. Still there was no response from his wife who was wide awake now.

Charlie fell to the floor with a loud thump and began flopping about like a fish out of water. He cried out with the anguish of the damned.

"Charlie," his wife finally said in a calm voice, stifling another yawn. "Stop it. It's not gonna work. I know it's April the first. You've never been able to fool me and you never will. Now stop goofing around or you'll be late for work."

At the office, Charlie ignored the work folders stacked on his desk as he tried to think up some way to fool his clever wife. After trying for ten years and failing his need to do so had become an obsession.

And then he hit on it.

He told his secretary of his plan and being a natural practical joker she went along with it. She had her roommate, Dolores, call Charlie's wife, since her voice was too well known. Dolores was to tell her that Charlie was seeing another woman.

"That'll get her," Charlie chuckled gleefully.

~

"Are you certain?" Charlie's wife asked when Dolores had told her of Charlie's fictive dalliance.

"Yes," Dolores replied sympathetically. She heard a faint sob and almost didn't have the heart to continue. "Yes. I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you.

With another sob Charlie's wife thanked her meekly and hung up.

That evening when Charlie got home his wife seemed more taciturn than usual, but she said nothing. Charlie smiled to himself, knowing that he had finally gotten to her.

After supper, she glared at him over the table.

"So, you're seeing another woman!! How could you?"

Charlie started laughing.

"April fool! I finally got you."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Charlie told her how he had got his secretary's friend to call her with the phony story. But he wasn't prepared for the shocked look that turned his wife's face ashen.

"Oh, my God!" she cried, horror struck.

"Why, what's wrong?" Charlie cried, feeling an uneasiness creep all over him.

"I put rat poison in your food," she cried out in great distress. "Charlie! Charlie! Oh, my God, Charlie!"

Charlie glanced down at the unfinished portion of his meal -- mashed potatoes smothered in brown gravy with a few uneaten stalks of broccoli -- and felt himself becoming ill.

"We have to get you to the hospital!" she exclaimed, rising so quickly that she knocked her chair over. "You'd better drive," Charlie said weakly, holding his stomach as they climbed in the car. "I might not be able to make it."

As they sped toward the hospital Charlie tried to think of a plausible story to tell the doctors about how he had ingested rat poison, for he still loved his wife, and after all, if he hadn't fooled her none of this would have happened. It was all his fault. What an ass he had been.

Suddenly Charlie realized they weren't headed toward the hospital.

"Where are we going?"

His wife glanced at him smiling.

"There's a sale on at Penny's."

"But I'm dying," Charlie moaned with disbelief.

"Oh, pittle, surely you don't think I'm dumb enough to fall for one of your April Fool's jokes, do you?"

moi spoke out loud on 4/01/2006 10:30:00 AM

[7] told me everything loud and clear