April Fools, Whose the Fool Now?

April 1, 2012

April Fool's day, turns out, is a very important day for me, but not for the reason you might think.  Many who know me, know I have a good (to great) sense of humor and like to play jokes on those I love and care about.  However, for some reason, April Fool's day has historically not been a day for me to indulge in playing those jokes.  Perhaps its for the same reason Friday the 13th is considered a good luck day to me.  Anyway, April 1 has a spiritual significance to me, it was the day I was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Also, the first weekend of April every year is the annual General Conference of the Church (5 - 2 hour sessions of music and sermons by the leaders of the Church, including our Prophet), which is always a spiritual rejuvenation for me.  Needless to say (although I have already said it) April 1 is a special and important day for me. 

However, this post is about what happened on this April 1, a Sunday, and also the second day of General Conference.  Due to the improvement of technology over the last two decades, I can now watch General Conference from the comfort of my home instead of traveling to the nearby church.  So, Ashley and I were getting ready for the first session when I walked into the bathroom and saw IT.  That's right, a pregnancy test.  I have been studying reproduction since my Junior year at BYU, so I should be able to read a simple pregnancy test, but I didn't, looked at it and read it as "not pregnant".  This of course should get some laughs about how men never read the instructions.  But alas, I digress.  I asked Ashley about it and she said, "Is that what it says?"  She left it there, for about 10 minutes.  After finishing getting ready Ashley calls me over and says, I think this test is positive, and she showed me in the directions how to figure out it was indeed positive.  The second band was so faint, I was a little dubious.  But, seeing that this was one of those pivotal moments in life, how I would react to finding out I would become a father, well... I got excited.  True or not, it did not matter, what mattered was that Ashley believed it and I had to believe it and I had to make her believe that I believed it and that I was excited, ready and thrilled at the news.  Now, when you find out for the first time that you will be a parent, more especially a father, life gets more real than ever before and in that one instant the world rested on my shoulders.  The clock was ticking, less than nine months to put the final training on being a father!

General conference now takes on new meaning as I sit and watch and ponder on how I can better spiritually prepare (which includes temporal preparation as well) to be a father and a better husband.  Once General conference is over, and all this news weighs on me, Ashley has a brilliant idea.  Ashley wants to video tape our reactions to finding out we are pregnant, so that when it is time to share with family we can simply email the video out for all to see.  She gets the camera out ready to go, when I bring a grinding halt to the process.  "What is the vision you have for this video," I asked.  Ashley gave a quick answer about telling people the good news.  I kept asking questions about how we wanted to do it, what should we say, when do we reveal we are pregnant, I kept that discussion going at least 15 minutes.  Nothing is simple with me, well, not when it comes to story telling.  Finally we agree to a format, Ashley video tapes me, asks me how I feel about becoming a father, and more such questions.  Then comes the big question, Ashley asks, "How would you feel if I told you this was an April Fool's joke?"  BLANK STARE!  I am shocked, my mind is reeling, trying to get hold of sanity for a moment.  Then it hits me, this is really a joke.  I am instantly angry, I mean livid, and incredibly impressed for my wife's trickery.  Both feelings well up inside and linger for the rest of the day.  I tried to express both, but I think my anger won out, I told Ashley how I felt and especially how that last part with the video recording was the worst.  Give me a few hours and I would think it all so hilarious, but in the moment you can't help feel the semi-betrayal.  So, needless to say, the video no longer exists, Ashley felt so bad she deleted it.  It wouldn't have mattered because the sound didn't record anyway, so it was simply me being really animated, lots of smiles, then a heart stopping blank face, nothing.

In the end, it was hilarious!  I give major props to Ashley for one of the best April Fool's jokes ever played on me.  It was played out with poise and sneakiness I had no idea my wife had the capability of pulling off.  For those who like to know how this was pulled off, well part of General Conference there is a session for the men only on Saturday night, so Ashley went out with some friends whose husbands were also at the meeting.  One of them was pregnant.  You can figure out the rest from there. April Fools!  Whose the Fool Now? ME!