The Fool Was I

It started as a joke: I love a good April Fool’s joke, especially when it’s me playing it instead of receiving it.  The key to doing a good joke is catching people early in the day.  On THE DAY, April 1.  I don’t really plan an April Fools ahead of time.  I just happened to remember to do it this year because I was watching Sunday Morning on TV, before church and they had a story on painted masterpiece forgeries in honor of April Fools.  I was inspired.

 First I got Melinda.  I was supposed to meet her in an hour for church so I sent her a text telling her I was too hung over to go to church and was going back to bed instead.  She shot back that she hoped “it was worth it” and remarked that I had sounded so sober when we had talked the evening before about our arrangements.  I sent back the April Fools confession and re-established our meeting time before church.  But my appetite was wetted.  Sad but true: being hung over is not a huge stretch for me.  I might have been in that condition a time or two in the not so very distant past.   But then for some reason I wanted a bigger lie: something that was more a stretch.  I got a wild hair and decided to change my relationship status on Facebook.  I haven’t had the pleasure of doing that since I started actively Facebooking a couple of years ago.  With no thought to the consequences or how it might be received I went to edit my profile and changed the status from “single” to “in a relationship.”  I initially tried to complete the “with” portion with George Clooney but since he is not a FB friend of mine it wouldn’t let me complete that part.  I guess that was a good thing because it let the other part of my new relationship remain a mystery. 

As I selected the “save changes” button a crack opened up in my heart.  What would it be like to be in a relationship?  Those of you who know me know I have done my best to avoid any such status change since the very welcome end to my twenty year marriage about seven years ago.  But just checking that box did something in me and I kind of April Fooled myself.

I was surprised when some of my closest friends almost immediately posted things like “What???  Call me.  Want to know all the details!”  Others “liked” my status.  I thought “you mean people might actually believe that I could be in a relationship?  This is interesting.”  So I let it ride for most of the day.  I’m not a good liar in real time so those I talked to on the phone I fessed up to.  But as I told each of them “I love that you think that it could even possibly be true.” 

Later in the day there were some who immediately smelled a fool and tried to spoil the lie.  I tried to keep up with those spoilers, deleting those remarks as quickly as I could find them.  (And if you are one of those, you are very smart but also a dream killer.  I forgive you.  I would have done the same thing.)

I have done a lot of work avoiding being in relationship.  Ask Jill who is forever after me to get on a dating website (She is a success story.  Found a wonderful man to whom she is now married on such a site.  Diligently kept up the work through some not so successful internet based dates until she found her love.)  Ask my friends who openly agree that relationships take too much work and we don’t want to do that much work anymore.  Ask my heart that goes into spastic palpitations with just the thought of getting close to a man again.  Nope.  I am not relationship material.  Yet…I am admitting it was some fun on April Fools for just one day (well not even one full day) pretending to be in that status.  So the joke was on me.  I was a fool.  For love.  April Fools.

Just so you realize that I wasn’t always this way, I walked into Starbucks Naked as a result of being there.  Doing that.  A long time ago.  You can read about it here.  If you dare.