Springtime Fitness
March 20, 2015
TV That Talks Back At You (Short Story)
April 17, 2015
This essay relates to my favorite holiday. I’ll give you one guess as to what it is. No cheating..
Word Count: 721
Committing Abnormal Behavior
With Total Impunity
Lots of people like to tell you what their favorite holiday happens to be. They’ll proudly proclaim that Thanksgiving is their preferred mini-vacation exclusively because it allows them
to consume massive amounts of Turkey and other fixins. This despite the fact that they’re packing more than a few extra pounds on the old frame. These folks will also tell you they’re just being polite and can’t be gulted into cutting back on the shoveling of obscene amounts of organic nourishment into their gullet.
Others will stick their chest out as they tell you Halloween happens to be the coolest holiday. Entirely because the day allows them to dress up incognito and carry out all manner of ludicrous things with total and complete impunity. So what if they dress up like a psychotic maintenance man just so they can booby trap the opposition’s practice field. Its Halloween and you can do these sorts of things and nobody should care. Sort of like a license to turn your brain off.
My favorite holiday is sort of like that. Because I love satire/wit and regularly tell people I watch television sitcoms because I need to carry out the task for vital research purposes, April 1st happens to be a holy day on the David G. Swanson calendar. This year was a perfect opportunity to celebrate this most sacred of 24-hr. foolishness periods. Last year at this time found me in California so I wasn’t able to plan my attack, but this time around things were mighty different.
In the past I’ve tailored the particular tricks to specific people and this year was no exception. Depending upon my relationship with that particular person, the trick I attempted to play on them would match their personality. The possibilities were endless, and two days before the first of the month found me jumping off the walls. Basically more excited than a die-hard skier as the white stuff is falling out of the sky in buckets.
The best scam this year was my college buddy winning the New England Lottery and deciding to give me $2 million fat ones to spend the way I want. The India trip beckons in this particular situation. Along those lines, a Silverton friend mentioned that I probably don’t want to work for him anymore unloading lumber at his hardware store. Finally as a testament to my college buddies’ generosity, he told me that if he did win the lottery he’d give me the bucks to fly out and visit him.
Relocating to distant locales has always been a favorite scam. In the past I’ve moved to South America so I can improve my Spanish language skills, back to Kenya because I crave the local cuisine, and to NYC since I miss the soothing sounds associated with riding the subway.
Used the NYC relocation scam once again this year. This time my cousin in Oakland swallowed it hook-line-and-sinker and even called to discuss my pending move. While talking to him on the phone I could hardly keep from laughing and had to end the phone link. The thought of him catching me in the scam kept floating through my head.
Since I’ve been pulling off my April Fools stories for a while now, it seems like I’ve gotten pretty good at carrying off the scams. Fortunately for our readers out there I’ve developed a set of rules for ensuring the deceit’s success. 1. When you’re telling your story to the person-whether it’s via e-mail or in person, act as serious and sincere as possible. 2. When you can, have a hangdog appearance on your face and look like you’re about to cry. 3. If you’re writing to the person use lots of zealous sounding sentences. 4. Make sure you do not start laughing while telling your story; otherwise this may jeopardize the falseness of the tale. These rules sound fairly simple to pull off, but they’re not. Take it from the voice of experience.
Unfortunately April 1stonly happens once a year so I can’t come up with stories on a regular basis. Maybe that’s a good thing since I might end up spending all my free moments thinking about ways to fool people. Could get tricky if that happens once or twice a month.
