The Story of My Engagement

April Fools Day is almost too easy for me. First of all, I was a compulsive liar when I was a child so I've had a lot of practice in saying things that just aren't true. Second, I'm a writer, which means I'm pretty good at making things up on the spot and doing so with the right amount of detail to make whatever the story is seem believable. Third, I am able to maintain a straight face with such superhuman inscrutability that very few people have ever been able to find a reliable way to tell the difference between when I'm serious and when I'm kidding. You think I exaggerate for effect here. I assure you I do not.

For me to bring these powers into an elementary school setting, where everyone is so warm and fuzzy and friendly and supportive and encouraging and smiley? The results can be devastating. So tonight I will share with you some of the background involved in constructing a perfect April Fools Day joke. Now, I don't mean something as ridiculously easy as a simple prank. "Whoops, sugar for salt! Uh oh, taped down the handle on the sprayer!" Not that I'm above pranks; one year on April Fools Day, I got every single kid in my class with a different prank, and some of them were so weak I was almost embarrassed to claim them. It's worth pointing out, however, that the truly great prank of that day was borrowed from an episode of M*A*S*H, in which I made one kid wait so long for his prank that he was downright twitchy and paranoid by the end of the day... only to discover that my prank was to drive him into that paranoia. (I never said my sense of humor didn't have a dark side.) Even this year I grabbed a spontaneous moment and fell back to a classic prank, when I quietly stepped up behind a friend of mine in an empty computer lab and just asked what she was doing. We didn't quite need to fire up the defibrillator down the hall, but it was close.

No, a true April Fool's Day joke is one where you say something that captures someone's attention to such a degree that when they find out there's no truth to the story, they are absolutely gobsmacked to learn you were making it up. I've had a couple of good ones over the years: There was the day I walked around on crutches with a giant Band-Aid on my forehead, and had most of the kids and half of the staff believing I had slipped on the parking lot ice the night before and hit my head on a car. There was the spiraling lie I still can't believe I got away with today. But one of the all-time classics has to fall back to the year I was engaged to be married. Supposedly. Allow me to explain.

A good friend of mine, someone I've known for nearly 20 years now, made the mistake of scheduling her return from maternity leave on April 1. I won't name her here, because if you know the story already you know who she is, and if you don't she might not want me spreading this around. Plus she's probably tired of hearing the story after all these years.... anyway. The prank was to get her to believe that during the weeks she had been away from school, I had met someone and fallen in love so completely and so quickly that I was already engaged.

Step 1: Play on people's trust. The key to success here was my enlisting a friend of ours as a co-conspirator, someone so perfectly sweet she would never be suspected of being involved in something like this. I told her my plan and she was immediately on board.

Step 2: Diversion. Somehow, either through sincerity or feigned concern or by downplaying the situation, draw attention away from the fact that it's April Fools Day. Don't give them a reason to think it might be.

Step 3: Make the situation normal. You have a better chance of things working if the joke creeps up on the victim and is given room to grow. Our plan was to plant the seed early in the day and let it develop on its own until after school. If we had rushed in with the news early in the morning, that probably would have tipped it off.

Step 4: Choose the right details. I had a college professor tell me that creative writing is like a dot-to-dot drawing; as the writer you offer up a few details and let the reader fill in the rest of the images on their own. If you choose enough good details to make it all seem real, your victim will do the rest.

Okay. So here's what happened. And ________, I hope you won't punch me for writing all of this up if you ever read it....

She shows up at school, her first day back. Focused on being back at work, very likely still thinking about the new baby, so I had diversion built in. My partner catches her in the morning: "I'm not supposed to say anything because he wanted to tell you himself, but I can't help myself! HE GOT ENGAGED!" Now the victim thinks *she* is in on a secret instead of the other way around. We had actually encouraged other people to make passing mentions of my engagement during the day, talking about something that probably would have been big news like they normally would have, but I don't know if anyone else came through for us on this or not. And frankly, we didn't spread it too much because I was worried about someone else blowing it accidentally. But the idea was given the day to grow. I saw her at one point during the day, and we had a "What's new?" kind of small-talk session. I said nothing much, but asked her to come by my room after school ended so we could talk.

She told me later she didn't think much about it during the day -- diversion worked!-- but when we got together and I started hinting at things it began to come back. I broke the news and told her how I met my new imaginary woman met at a staff development session. I told her which school she taught at and which grade, what her name was, no I hadn't met her parents yet, but we were flying out west to meet them in a couple of weekends and I was kind of nervous about it, we hadn't picked a date yet but were thinking October because she enjoyed the fall colors so much, and I went on like this for about ten minutes. This is where the writer part comes in -- I had to make up details and create this off the top of my head, because something in the plan wasn't working. The secretary was supposed to call down over the intercom and say April Fool at a specific time to reveal the joke, but she got caught up doing something, oh, I don't know, job-related... one of those running-the-school types of things secretaries so commonly have to do. So I'm rambling on, trying to keep my victim interested so she doesn't notice the seven people standing in my doorway who were on the verge of laughter listening to all of this. FINALLY we get the call, and she looks at me, unable to reconcile what was happening. "I don't get this. What joke? What April Fools?" And when I explained it was all made up, it just left her head spinning. The doorway people spilled into the room told her how happy they were to have her back while my co-conspirator tried to make a quick getaway.

And even though I occasionally remind her of this story on April Fools Day, commemorating a sort of anniversary, she still likes me. At least I think so.