April Fools Day: It's All Yours This Year!

Historically, this calendar day has not been a good one for The Sheep. Closing in on her twentieth year in the profession, she has learned to fear the dreaded day of fools.

The high schoolers largely ignored the day, being somewhat preoccupied with major life planning and how to keep their baggy pants from cascading to their knees. However, it was always best to stay alert as there were always one or two who threw caution and their reputations as young adults to the wind in order to fill your car with fish or put plastic wrap on the toilet seats.

Middle schoolers were tougher. A complicated mix of capricious child and angst-ridden pre-teen, they tended towards the crueler side of the day. Cut them some slack; these poor folk are just walking hormone bombs awaiting a place to go off. On the positive side, those ten years of my career honed my instincts and reaction time to that of an international super spy.

Elementary school has proven to be the most challenging. The young ones lack anything that might pass for a "sophisticated" sense of humor and one finds oneself repeatedly responding to the words "your shoe is untied" with exaggerated double-takes and hearty, though forced, laughter throughout the day. By dismissal time, the average educator is in need of both chiropractic and psychiatric intervention.

But every once in a blue moon the universe does me a solid. This is one of those years: April Fool's Day has landed on a Saturday. The only highjinx with which The Sheep has had to contend is Cartoon Network's change in programming to reflect the date. I have not had to check my car on an hourly basis, edge my way up to doors and spring from them to catch evil doers like a ninja or pretend that I actually thought there was a monster behind me. Not once.

I've done my time, people. So if The Sheep feels zero guilt about the fact that she spent her day leisurely turning the heel on a sock and the spindle on her wheel while you got to stay home with your kids...well, sorry about that.



I just can't bring myself to feel badly. The next April Fool's day is just a short 364 days away. My turn will come again.

SA