No Foolin'

Here's a Happy Spring image for you from this morning.

Never mind that I really need to clean out the iris bed behind them -- aren't the hyacinths pretty? (This is one of those glass half-empty/half-full tests.)

I've never been much of one for April Fool's Day. And, though I'm a certifiable smart-ass and very fond of laughing, I'm not much of a prankster. Pranks that rely on duping someone else are rarely funny to me. Maybe that's my Sensitive Soul aspect - I usually feel too bad for the person made to be a fool to dredge up much humor.

I remember one Christmas, a man my mom was seeing convinced her to play a joke on her sister and brother-in-law. The brother-in-law had a rep for being a prankster, so my mom's guy was intent on winning that little contest. They went and bought a lottery ticket using the winning numbers from the day before. Then my mom pretended to check her ticket against the newspaper. When they all matched, my aunt started going crazy with excitement. Her eyes lit up with all the possibilities that lay before them. A huge jackpot!

My mom blew it by starting to cry. I have a sick feeling about it still. Seeing that hope and joy and all along it was just a dirty trick...

Maybe I feel like we all spend enough time being foolish. In our day to day lives, we suffer disappointments great and small. We pin our hopes on perhaps getting that something on sale, to landing that lucrative multi-book contract or winning the lottery (same thing). We hope for love, for comfort, for joy. We pray that disappointment won't smack us in the back of the head.

It happens enough without us doing it to each other in the name of fun.

But then, perhaps the intent is to lighten all that. Perhaps, in a way, we're making fun of how the world punishes us. It's a way of practicing disappointment, without it being real.

However you spend the day, I wish you honest laughter, a bundle of Spring flowers and a minimal amount of foolishness