Seven and the best April Fools joke ever

School is a serious place 99.9% of the time but every once in a great while you need to let go and have some fun. I decided that I wanted to plan something really spectacular for April fools one year. The kids had been planning good things for the last couple and this was going to be the teacher’s year to fool them. I had a very understanding administration and we were a small school so it everyone was willing to go along. As I planned I realized I need a cast for this extravaganza. I enlisted the help of my principal, the reading coach, and the school nurse.

On April first I rolled in to school with a fake lip ring and a plan.

The kids were beside themselves. They thought I had gotten a lip ring the night before and it was all they could talk about. Then the reading coach came into my classroom and was trying to talk to me. She was trying to convince me we should speak privately. All of a sudden her walkie talkie went off, she had purposely cranked the volume, and it was the principal telling the reading coach to go cover my class because she wanted to ‘speak with me’. The tone in her voice said I was in trouble. The kids were in shock. I did what any good teenager does when cornered, I started to get mad. I told the reading coach that if the principal didn’t like me wearing it she could have it! I then ‘ripped’ it out of my lip and grabbed some tissues and practically threw the ring at her. The nurse got called and asked to bring her emergency bag. Then we waited about thirty seconds glaring at each other before we said “April fools!” and the kids dissolved into hysterics. We had absolutely gotten the majority of them.

Seven was a wise little thing though and she pointed out that the lack of ‘blood’ when I pulled out the ring was a giveaway. I’m still not sure to this day if I fooled her and then she realized or if she saw no blood and knew but kept quiet about the joke. She suggested we use a red marker to stain a bunch of tissues and try it on the next class. I was game and so were the other adults so she put the tissues in the box, and even put a clean one on top so you couldn’t see the red, and we came up with a different story since we knew the other kids could have heard about the principal wanting to see me and seen the nurse come into my room.

Seven suggested we have a little free time at the end of the day for both classes since my birthday was the next day and that I allow them to put on music. Seven planned that she would start to dance and fling her very long hair in my direction and that it would ‘catch’ on my ring. We figured out the right angle to keep anyone from seeing it was fake and got back to our textbooks.

At the end of the day we allowed both classes to intermingle and when Seven asked if we could put on some music the other kids were all for it so I said yes and we put on some music. Seven started chair dancing and so did a bunch of the other kids. Seven got up and boogied over to where I was and said “Happy Birthday!” and whipped her hair around to the music and we ‘caught’ each other.

Needless to say, only half the students were surprised because one of the classes knew what was going on already, but the kids who were in on the joke played their role to perfection. They gasped, winced, and covered their mouths in shock that something so fun could go so wrong. I begged for tissues and Seven reached over and grabbed a wad out of the box. When she twisted back I let go of her hair, which I had been holding because I was pretending that I didn’t want it to yank on the ring, and the red tissue was at my lip.

Some of the students insisted we didn’t fool them, but Seven and I knew better. When she said ‘April Fools!’ the class that was in the know was positively gleeful pointing out how they’d fooled the other class. I pointed out that I had fooled them that morning and they dialed it back a notch but the reality is we had pure unadulterated fun. We laughed. We laughed hard. Sure, we used about ten minutes of class on an April Fool’s joke, but sixteen years later it still makes me smile. I saw Seven a few years back out at dinner and she said she still tells that story. I do too. It’s not just a story about a good joke though. It’s a story about how you can come together and make each other laugh. March and April were particularly cold months that year, the outside world was bleak, there had been some neighborhood issues that had kids feeling sad and confused, and there was April first, just sitting there waiting to be used to make everyone forget all the other things even if it was just for a few minutes.

Than you Seven for helping me make April Fools a day that still makes me smile.