Shhhhhhhh. Don’t tell him what day it is. Coast is clear this year through Easter. But last year this time, stuck in lock down and learn-at-home, shut in and shut down in so many ways, here was our ticket out…

“Mom.” (exasperated SIGH) “April Fools is April Fools. I can’t help there’s a worldwide epidemic.”   — William, on why he has to order, among other things, an “Ecoblast Refillable Airhorn” from Amazon when other people are worried about getting toilet paper and food.

I don’t know why, but ever since boy was in grade-school, April 1st rivals Christmas as the best day of the year. Truly, did I even notice the end of March with kids one through four? I confess I did not. But I do now. Give Will a calendar for Christmas, the kind you hang on his wall with race cars or Avenger cartoons on it, page through the grids and you will find two things in his pencil scrawl: 1. “Will’s bday” and 2. “April Fools’ Day.” Why is this non-event (for the rest of the world) such an indispensable occasion for my son? Perhaps it is the wholesale endorsement of pranks and mischief that light his boyish fire. Ooooh, terrible metaphor, that. Perhaps it is the creative foil for all that is rigid, required, measured, meted and mundane about life. A true jubilee, when bonds are set free. Perhaps it is a necessary pit-stop on the way to adulthood that Will needs to refuel his raison d’etre. Whatever it is, he takes the holiday very seriously.

With ample time on his hands in lock-down, the preparation for this woefully under-celebrated feast day ratchets to the top of his to-do list. And I’m not talking about boning up on how to short-sheet a bed or tape all your spray faucets. Will’s “Special Ops” have been escalated to a degree requiring daily attention, complete with three evolutions, all charted and recorded in—get this—a little black notebook. I kid you not. Though I am curious, finding him studiously jotting notes, making references, filling page after page, I dare not peek. I see him researching various products and gag items online. I see him coming and going, asking for random supplies—“Do we have any turpentine? Are you using this cardboard? “What is Saran wrap and can I have some?” I dare not speak. I’m getting more worried by the minute. He tells that me this weekend he has “a LOT of work to do” because he “needs to be done with Phase II by Sunday night.” This is not vocabulary I am used to hearing from boy wonder. For him, a deadline is something to which you throw a cheerful wave on your way to more pressing agendas of life. Now, he’s making lists and writing a step-by-step plan of attack? Where is my son and what have you done to him.

The Countdown Begins: Five Days Out

Phase I: Materials and Weaponry Assemblage. His arsenal is growing at an alarming rate. No more squirting daisies or whoopie cushions for this boy. Lame impostors. Will scoffs at the idea. “The girls probably think I’m going to, like, pour water on them in the shower….He chuckles...”Little do they know… I am a MASTER of Crime!” Is he actually wringing his hands with glee? Is that an almost cartoon-like maniacal gleam in his eye as he anticipates the doom and destruction he is going to unleash? At this writing he has amassed or purchased online the following: a fake wall-mount video camera, a very not fake airhorn, several rolls of duct tape, double-sided tape, bungie cords, and canons of paper towel tubes (where the actual paper towel went that was on them I know not, but I could have gotten me a pile for all that paper goodage on the black market).

His piece de resistance is the highly coveted, fully certified aerosol can of “liquid arse” —(“which, mom… MOM! You know that’s not the real name, right? I can’t say the real word or you’d get mad at me.”) Son, I think we are a little beyond word choice in what upsets me these days. I can’t believe they even make such a product. Look it up. Liquid A— —. I reiterate to Will that we are only buying products from North America right now. Right, son??! No imports. So I guess this foulest 5 oz. elixir of death is proudly Made in the USA. Who knew? Will is ecstatic, and too excited to stay stealth or refrain from “testing” it. I have to get up and leave the kitchen, then the house, it smells so awful. As the weekend hums along, he can hardly contain himself waiting for his “wares” to arrive in the mail, any more than he can refrain from blowing a few of his upcoming pranks by describing to me in detail the mechanizations of his equipment and how he plans to use it, and which “YouTube” video I need to watch to know what he’s talking about. “But don’t worry, Mom. I know I told you some stuff. But that’s only a FRACTION of my capabilities. I have something really special planned for you.” Did he just say that? Here is my unspoken response: O.M.G. Is this really happening? I feel like I’m trapped in the opening scenes of a horror movie.

Phase II: Testing and Empirical Data

Now begins the engineering phase of the what, how, and when of his designs. Will has never let the “why” hold him up. Truth be told, I am worried. This week the Governor of Virginia issues strict orders to stay home. Do not go out. Today, approaching D-day with 13-year-old boy simmering with mischief, I am too scared to stay in. I tread lightly through the house, pausing to look before I sit, eat, or operate an appliance. You never know. Things go missing, for instance. The trash can. The matches. The cat (just kidding). One night I notice our bathroom door doesn’t shut quite right anymore, it sticks. And that’s strange. In the 23 years we’ve lived here it has never stuck before. Neither has it been particularly humid out. Studying it more closely I notice that the pins holding the door on its hinges are slightly elevated, all of them, almost as if someone tapped them up… with a hammer?… trying to loosen them…? Or maybe it was just that category five tornado passed through here last night.

Two Days Out

I pass by his room, long after lights out. Will is reading by flashlight. Or no, it’s his caving headlamp being used as a flashlight. And he’s writing, not reading. “Hi son what are you doing? “Oh hi mom. Sorry. Almost done. I’m making a battle plan.” I hear the rustle of paper in the darkened room. The thing is pages long.

Anyone who’s worried that the Learn-at Home model is failing need not worry a moment longer. We have every subject covered here, teachers. Starting with language arts: boy has written more in the past five days than he would ever choose to at school. Outlines and lists and detailed schematics for this trick or that prank. For a boy who doesn’t like to write, his little black book is half-full. Sequential thinking, titled articles, legible handwriting. They say that writing by hand has a pneumonic component, such that what you write you remember. Good thing, since we stuck keyboards under their fingers and screens in their faces and wonder why they can’t retain anything. I am going to remember these days for the rest of my life.

Then there’s math. I had him add up all the very real charges for this non-virtual enterprise. Oh, how I wish it were virtual! I did not like the hesitation in his response when I casually asked (he loading up on twine and paperclips from the kitchen drawer), “Hey Will, this isn’t going to actually damage our home is it?” Strange, I ask the dog that every day and get that same blank look. “Uh…” says boy after a moment’s think through, “Well, not too much.” And he’s back to his looting. It’s okay. Will has already cost us so much in carpeting, wall paint, window glass, small engines and appliances that we’ve decided to keep his security deposit.

As for science we’ve got that nailed, too. It dawns on me, observing these operations, that he really was paying attention (from the hallway) all those years of middle school science and labs. I’ve seen his notes and heard him talk. He has tests and fails built into his schedule, and he takes copious notes on the results. He even has charts and graphs for his upcoming trials! The empirical method is in full-force here, backyard mode. He understands that if you sling a hammock 35 feet in the air to trees whose combined circumference is only slightly wider than my forearm, you’re going to want a test cat to put in it. Here is random sampling of said trial and error from this month’s quarantine living alone, learned the only way true geniuses—the hard way: 1. Never stand on the top rung of a six-foot step ladder, 2. Boy scout knots, no matter how perfect and pretty, may not hold on a 2500 lb trucking cable when it is being used to support the “world’s longest hammock,” and 3. They may call it a mini-tramp but it sure can issue full-sized pain. And today’s Eureka! moment? Never sound an air horn at 7:30 in the morning seated at the kitchen table with your sisters asleep upstairs if you want to live to see April 2nd.

Because it is a well-rounded education here at the Burk house, we also have lessons in ethics (what can be done is not always what should be done), philosophy (I think therefore I can. Or at least I think I think… and, I thought I could… It seemed like a good thought at the time…), and a rigorous course in apologetics (you know that large/expensive/irreplaceable item you had in the garage…). Back in the day, my homeschool unit studies with the girls involved things like apple picking and tasting, followed by Jamestown Day on the back patio where we dressed in colonial attire and made apple butter. Hitting the high notes of homeschool. The more measurable and mundane the better. Will’s “unit studies” almost always involve a shower before he can be let back into the house.

Twenty-Four Hours and Counting

This morning Will allows me to peek at this “baddle” plan, even take a picture so we can be on the same page for the big day. I guess I won’t take off for spelling, since the care and attention to detail is so evident. Thirty-eight lines, single-spaced, of his “schedule” for today, starting with 7:30 wake-up and 21:30 sleep. I wish. Normally he’s up much later than that, but has informed me that he has to get up very early tomorrow. Maybe he’s just trying to butter me up with that early bed time talk. Homeschooling a middle-school boy, who even on a good day doesn’t make full contact with the seat of a chair (unless it’s large, stuffed, accepts shoes and sits about 8 feet from the television—in which case he is statue like) is a little like hurling mud: some of it sticks, some of it falls, all of it makes a big mess.

I barely recognize special agent “Stealth” Burk slipping out the house from our 2nd story balcony (He knows if he comes through the kitchen I’m going to insult him with that “Did you brush your teeth?” sequence). But I have the Master’s marching orders, shared with me yesterday and photographed on my phone. If he sticks to this schedule I will know exactly what to expect and where he is going. Keep in mind, people, I’m reading a two-page (double sided!) handwritten and shared schedule of a 13-year-old boy. Are there stranger things to come, ’cause if so me and this here global pandemic are goin’ high tail it outta here! But look, take a peek–boy who couldn’t get an assignment duly written in his Agenda has here a blow-by-blow schedule for his day: At 09:30 he will “walk the dog” and at 10:00 he will “make fake throw-up,” a key component in any April Fools’ observance worth—er, salt. At 10:15 he will “freeze more food” (??) and at 10:20 he plans to “prepare and evaluate all April Fools.” I’m glad he has built in “lunch,” and “recreational time,” which will probably involve riding a milkcrate powered by his electric skateboard down to the ravine to work on his fort. I scan the schedule for the things a mom looks for: “Brush teeth,” “Practice instrument,” “READ….” Nope. Not too much of that, although he has honored long-standing household chore and “responsibilities.” Toward the end of the day, the activities are a little more vague:  17:00 — “Do any remaining chores/dutys [sic].” 17:30 —”Do any other stuff.” And at 17:45, simply —”Do stuff.” Then my eyes pop and I know we are in trouble when I see what’s scheduled for 18:45: “Practice escape route.”

The Night Before

‘T’was the night before Fools’ Day and all through the house… Not a creature was safe, not even the mouse…

I go up to say goodnight, already stepping carefully through his darkened doorway. Room looks much the same as it has all day: Trashed. A place for everything and nothing in its place. Then I notice a very tidy stack of clothing on the floor by his bed: pants and a shirt carefully folded atop sneakers with the mud wiped off, and a 1960s black leather camera case I’m guessing no longer holds his nerf gun bullets. It can only be one thing: tomorrow’s tool kit for the Master of Crime. He has his alarm set for 5:30 in the morning (!) and says pleasantly as I tuck him in, “so, Mom, if you need a little extra time in the morning, don’t worry, just take your time coming down.”

Heck with that, son. Walk into a boobie-trapped kitchen at 0600? No way. I’m going off the balcony.