April Fools

This is not a trick….or is it?


Through some strange coincidence, D and I have announced some pretty big events on the 1st of April. Never intentionally, though, we were excited to share our news. No wonder people thought we were joking…..

The first was our decision to combine our last names when we married. We told Jimmy, who would become the best man at our wedding, and we had a hard time convincing him we were serious, because who does that, right?! My last name was important to me and the realization that my last name was basically meaningless was really offensive. All a woman has to do to change her name is sign some papers after she gets married. Now a man, on the other hand, has to put notices in the paper, hire a lawyer, and go before a judge to change his last name. We still had to do all that, D actually changed his name before we married and I just signed away mine….. Okay, I’ll step down from my soap box. Clearly we should have waited a day to tell.

The second was announcing that I was pregnant with L. Again people thought we were joking.

Last April 1st, I told D that his fish had babies. They hadn’t, I was teasing…it’s what I do. It didn’t have the desired effect, as D got really excited. He had to get off the phone quick otherwise I would have told him then that I was joking, but as it happened he spent the rest of the day telling people about the baby fish. When he came home, all I had was an “I’m sorry” and a pretty weak “April Fools!”

This is not an April Fools’ joke that happened to me, but one that my good friend G played on his girlfriend. G and J hadn’t been dating that long, but I knew he really liked her. He sat her down and looked at her really seriously and said, “J…I don’t think this is working out.” She began to cry and he immediately realized that this was the worst joke ever. They have now been married for almost 9 years, and she still doesn’t think it’s funny.

Now I have to think of something to fool the boys…without making them cry.