April Fools

I truly enjoyed the front page of the April Fool’s edition of the Messenger last week –a real delight, in contrast to the April Fool’s dialogue I read daily coming out of the current administration in Washington. If it weren’t happening in real-time, it would be hard to fathom that some of the President’s policies are even “fit to print.” Yet there are regular news reports of an executive order one day and a modification the next or an exemption. It seems more than a policy of hardball. But I know no more than the guy sitting next to me at dinner does.

How many times have you been tricked into believing something is true on April 1st? In Rochester, where I grew up, there was snow on the ground for at least a month after the first official day of spring, so spotting the first sign of a thaw was a pretty big deal, and our school teachers made a point of it. Each morning around that time of year, the class was asked, “Who has seen a sign of spring?” Days would go by when no one raised their hand. To be the very first to report a sign of spring was to be the envy of all. When I was about 10 years old, a so-called friend came up to me before school—it happened to be April 1st, which only one of us was clued into—and said, “Did you see the robins? It’s the first sign of spring! Are you going to tell the class?” Of course, I fell for it, and even though I hadn’t actually seen a robin for nearly a year, when the teacher asked her usual question, I couldn’t resist the opportunity, and my hand shot up. “I saw a flock of robins!” I announced to everyone. Never mind that the snow was thick on the ground, and robins don’t usually show up in western New York until mid-May. Everyone in class looked at me, incredulous, then burst into laughter. “Ha ha April Fool!” they all shouted. I realized then that I was the butt of the joke. The teacher scowled, displeased with my dishonest grab for glory, and thereafter, I kept my hand down during spring question time.

Nowadays, the April Fools jokes are at the federal level, so I skim the national news in the New York Times and head to the obituaries, which I know are mostly factual. I find these life stories more interesting and practical for me. I particularly enjoy reading about the lives of the recently deceased authors and journalists, especially the ones who took a difficult but consequential stand. Politicians not so much since they are often like past versions of the present group in power – no backbone. Current news seems like a bad dream and one I will wake up from with a headache. So, I keep my head up, look straight ahead, keep my political views to myself, for the most part, and pray for a good ending to the ongoing April Fools story in play.