APRIL FOOLS!

I awoke to my cell phone alarm going off, with my phone fully encased in a 2-liter bottle of soda on the bedside table. Perfectly intact empty ginger ale bottle, vibrating to “Morning Flower.” It was like waking up in a nut house. Once I figured out how to extract it and shut off the alarm, I texted him: “I am too scared to get out of bed.”

For those wishing the short version, here is what awaits: The toaster oven, all five kitchen chairs, and the silverware (as in, the entire drawer) are gone. Gone. So is my bathroom door. The clocks are all changed to different times, the living room carpet has completely vanished, and this morning Bill could not find his car. He did, however, get to work 49 minutes early since the clocks were all changed.

For those willing to embark on a wilder journey, I will try to do justice to this day…

I summon the courage to come downstairs, feeling the same level of anticipation and excitement I still feel, as a parent, on Christmas morning. Only without the tree. Or the decorations. And…come to think of it, anything remotely resembling Christmas. The only gifts left out are cruel ones: tricks, pranks, gags and crazy stunts pulled off the internet for the past two weeks by the Master of Crime. Will is escorting me, circling me, mouthful of metal grinning so wide I think, Doesn’t that hurt your lips? Though he’s been up since 5:30, he’s fully clothed and rarin’ to go in his all-black Adidas joggers and Chincoteague sweatshirt, a bedhead villian and stunt master. After nearly falling flat walking into a “doorway wall” of clear packing tape from the knees down, I notice that my counters are especially clear this morning. That’s because everything on them is gone. As in, What toaster oven?? The contents of several cabinets have been switched–Whoops! That’s not a cereal bowl….Oops! Hey, where’d all the glasses go? –and Bill is convinced he recalibrated the wattage on our microwave because Bill’s re-heated coffee isn’t hot.

Like a waiter dressed in burgling attire, Will bows and waves with a flourish — “Exhibit A”: Dotted around the countertops are my six hand-blown Williamsburg wine goblets that we received as a wedding gift–each filled with water and turned upside down. Little glass cloches of disaster, daring me. Ladies and Gents, for your viewing pleasure, “Exhibit B” (another grand sweeping gesture showing off my oddly changed kitchen): Gathered around the table–on the floor–are five seat cushions in the exact spots vacated by their chairs. There is nowhere to sit, no toast to make and– GAK! Where’s the…? –no laptop to turn on first thing. That’s OK. He left the coffee maker and the kettle alone. We’ll just make some nice hot drinks and go sit in the living room to recover from the shock. Who needs coffee, anyway, with a morning like this?

I can tell from his electrified glee there’s more. Sure enough, living room has all its seating equipment (I check) but something else is bizarre in here, not quite right. Then I realize I am standing on nothing but a room-size rug pad and the entire 9 x 13 foot 2″ thick wool carpet is gone. Vanished. What the?? “Yeah, says boy. Wow.” I say “WILLIAMWHEREISMYRUG??? He is just shaking his head and grinning, pacing the rug pad, replaying this stunt and enjoying it more for the telling. “Wow… man… whoo-eee. Yeah, this one was the hardest. I guess I didn’t think it would be that heavy.” I am stunned. If I looked up to see it stuck to the ceiling I wouldn’t be more stunned. Bill says rolled, even the short way, it would have been 9′ long, 2′ thick and about 160 pounds. To his 98.9. Wow is right. Where the %$#@! is my carpet??

Will is pinging like a charged particle. Maybe he did mess with the microwave. He wants me to discover each prank, one by one, stumble into like his packing tape “fly tape for humans,” but he also wants to blurt them all out at once for I am too slow. See? I am the littlest kid at Christmas who actually wants to play with her gift before opening another. I am still laughing about the phone-in-bottle trick. Will that was so cool, you should go do it to one of the girls quickly before they wake up. “Oh no!” says he, taking a step back and shaking his head vigorously. “No go, Mom. Ellie told me if I came in her room she’d throw all my stuff out the window.” Okay then. Still, he’s got the bathroom so fouled with the “Liquid Arse” by the time they wake up we all have to evacuate.

There are water bombs in the refrigerator, stink bombs in the bathroom, and somebody puked in the tub. I have insider knowledge here I forgot to tell you. He made this stuff weeks ago, because everyone knows fake vomit has to ferment to get the desired smell. I noticed he tried several recipes, picked one, and placed the jar in the garage for its putrification. Who knew? Apparently dogs like fake vomit. I went out one morning and Gus had licked the platter clean. What a set-back. Will had to spend another day perfecting his wretch.

Now the bathroom is the hotspot–just waiting for that unsuspecting sister. Which will all be captured on the fake video camera hanging from the bathroom ceiling, its eerie “on” light on. He had Sophie going on that one, I know it. She was kind of smiling, but she was pressing me too hard to pass for total cognizance: “Mom, that thing isn’t real, is it? Cause I…you know…. It isn’t real, is it? It’s not. I know it’s not…. Is it? This is the girl I once convinced that I installed a “daughter cam” on her phone. We were states apart and the other mom hosting her for a beach weekend happened to text me they were almost arrived and she had stopped to let the girls run into a grocery store for ice cream and a Redbox. So I texted Sophie to ask which movie they picked and enjoy their ice cream….followed by her response — a surprise emoji, followed by my response, that I liked to be able to see what she is doing at all times so I had a new app installed on her phone, followed by several minutes of text silence followed by…well, it was a “poop” emoji. I really think I had her going, though she denies it to this day.

I will have to put some serious hutzpah into it to get back at “Stealth” Burk, however. The pranks continue through the morning. After Bill gets to work (49 minutes early) he discovers the cracked screen-saver that boy downloaded on his phone, and I discover that both computer mouses are strangely malfunctioning. Even the TV remote is mysteriously disabled. I try to go about my morning, where every paper, book, magazine, or mug I left on a table in the kitchen or living room is taped down securely with double-sided tape, such that sipping your tea brings you a face-ful of tablecloth. Lovely. Handy in a hurricane, though, to have ZERO flying debris. You could shake my whole house and the only thing would fall out is the roll of fake toilet paper deviously placed in the kids’ bathroom. Don’t know exactly how he managed to glue every single ply down in such a way, or which was the more shameful waste–glue stick or TP, but there are cries from the upstairs bathroom that go like this: “AARRRGHWIILLLLL-YUM!!” Throughout the day, I have little epiphanies, when what I have observed or taken delivery on for the past two weeks suddenly makes sense: Aahhh…so that’s what the electrical tape was for…

By mid-day the girls are sick of walking into invisible packing tape barriers strapped across doorways at varying heights. It’s actually pretty funny because every time it happens you hear this thwaaaack-catch, plastic-y type sound as they come into contact with the tape and then an audible %$#@! They can’t seem to enter or exit the kitchen without this little duet. But I can tell the joke’s over. They are tired of opening the fridge to a gush of cold water from an exploding balloon, really tired of the smell in the bathroom. Bathroom, heck. By noon the whole house smells like a diaper pail. It’s just one of those teachable moments where the crisis contains the lesson. We talk about carrying a prank too far. The invisible line. That though a particular trick, prank, or stunt be funny to think about, funny to execute the first time, you can’t expect people to keep laughing the third and fourth time. Isn’t it the recipient, son, the receiver of your prank, who determines how funny? One of Aristotles’s greatest rhetorical contributions: Know your audience. But Will may not be there yet. I think he’s listening until he offers this: “Next year, mom. Next year I could have a sleepover. If I had TWO people working on this stuff… yeah, if I had some help…” he shakes his head, giddy with this new thought, “Well then…DEFEAT.”

So does that mean we should keep these notes? Later in the day I get my hands on THE execution plan. It’s a homemade chart with lined columns indicating “Estimated Time,” “Prank,” and “How Prank is Done.” Twenty-five lines of itemized mischief and mayhem. My word. When I think about what boy was up to while we were all innocently asleep upstairs. 5:34 this morning: “Take rug from living room.” 5:45: “Turn Dad’s car around.” How does he know it takes 11 minutes to remove our entire living room floor covering?? It probably took twice that for grown men to put it in. Will confesses later that he had to push dad’s car, because he knew not to take the car keys without asking. Well, that’s good son. So while Bill is hastening through a door-less shower, Will asks for the keys and hides his car in the side yard. Now we are both tee-hee-hee-ing. I did not know some pranks hold out for permission.

At 5:59 we have “Crack Dad’s phone screen” and at 6:05 the “upside down glasses of water” trick. Nowhere here do I see any notation that they are hand-blown glass from Williamsburg that we wouldn’t let our kids touch for their first ten years of life. 6:12: “Put cardboard in toilet seat, 6:15: “Lock Ellie and Sophie in their rooms.” Whooo-ee. Wowser. No wonder they came down with those vaporizing death glares. From 6:18 on (“Put hair gel in the hand sanitizer”), the mode shifts to “all day” capers. All day: “Saran wrap the doors….” All day: “Spill stuff…” All day: “Randomly sound airhorn,” and this, my all-time favorite: All day: “Bad Air,” with the explanation “Spray liquid A– –.” Son, I’m going to nail you for profanity and lock you in that bathroom.

So it’s been quite a day. April Fools’, properly celebrated and (thank goodness) put to rest. I finally figured out how to upright all six glasses without spilling a drop. We found the bathroom door in the shower and the rug under the jeep. Looks like Will has been carving out a stealth bunker under there for a while. I am still looking for the knife drawer.

In retrospect, I have discovered that April Fool’s Day and Christmas are quite similar, after all. Clearly from Will’s perspective but also from mine. For one, I’ve never been so ramped up in my own home. I’ve never been so scared to cook, compute, or pee. I’ve never been so excited for a project, entirely of his own making, initiative, and execution to succeed (even if I did have to get whacked over the head or sprayed with water). And this: For most of boy’s years his mom has been trying to get him to fit in. Tall order, that. Today, on the first day of April, I took full unleashed delight in his fitting out.