Foolish

When I was a child we had such a good time in my household playing pranks on one another that I loved to take the pranks to school with me. I had a plethora of rubber spider, bats, snakes, and lizards that I loved to hide in people's desks and on toilet seats, etc. So, as I grew older the pranks got more and more elaborate. I would do the stupid calls to people's houses from radio stations saying they had won a new car or something like that. Well, this is a story about the first day of April in 1996 when I outgrew pranks.

My final stunt included two of my best friends in high school my senior year, one being my girlfriend at the time. They were both juniors. We had it all planned out. We would stage between my friend and me over my girlfriend in the Cellar, the place where we ate lunch on campus, which was most days at the time even though we had an open campus. We played the fight off perfectly, and yelled and made a scene and planned to physically fight after school, which was never to happen. It was just a stupid attention scene and was just supposed to die out and be forgotten. We all seemed pretty mad afterward for effect. I stormed out, and that was that.

Later in the day, after journalism class, one of my other very good friends, this one a girl, approached me. It was the time when we were all trying to choose dates for the prom. So, this senior girl who I held in high esteem (she may have been the smartest person I have ever personally known) and was always a very good friend to me approached me and said to me that since it seemed that I had broken up with my girlfriend would I like to go to the prom with her. That, my friends, is the moment in which I outgrew my love for stupid pranks. My heart sank. I was completely torn up to have to do what I had to do next, and never did I not want to say these two very awful words that came to mind in an instant, but thank goodness did not actually leave my lips, "April fools!" No, I didn't say them, and I have not said them since. I calmly and humbly explained the prank, which I don't think she thought was very funny, and we went on with our awkward friendship for the next few minutes until that blessed school bell rang and told us to go our separate ways. And it stayed awkward for a while.

Well, she found a date for the prom, and I still had mine. She was still one of my friends that came to my house for the after prom party where we watched "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and had pancakes at 3:00 in the morning (thanks mom), but I think because of my stupidity we lost something in our friendship fourteen years ago. We still keep up in different ways (currently only through facebook) and it wasn't a totally lost friendship. What can I say, it is our errors from which we learn the most.