Somewhere around 1982, my mother played an April Fool's Day prank on me. We don't remember what it was, except that it was effective and complicated. I immediately vowed to have my revenge.
April Fool's Day in 1983, I was in my Delta State University dorm room with my roommate, Scott A. Moore. (Scott A. now busies himself playing trumpet in the Memphis Symphony. Hit the link.)
Scott and I waited until about 11:45 p.m., and then called my parents' house. My mother answered. (To preserve her anonymity, I'll call her Mrs. BlahBlah.)
"Hello?"
"Is this Elizabeth BlahBlah ?" Scott asked.
"Yes it is." (still coming out of a deep sleep)
"Are you the parent or guardian of Allen BlahBlah?"
"YES I AM !" (wide awake now)
"Mrs. BlahBlah, my name is John Jakes, and I'm with the Cleveland, Mississippi police department. Are you in a place where you can talk?"
"YES I AM !" (totally wide awake.)
"Mrs. BlahBlah, we have arrested your son Allen for possession of a controlled substance, and we're holding him in one of the cells at the Bolivar County Sheriff's department, and we need to know if either you or your husband can come down and post bond and.....
"You mean you've arrested ALLEN ??? MY SON ALLEN?" (Needing to be scraped off the bedroom ceiling.)
"Yes, Mrs. BlahBlah, as I said, we've arrested Allen for possession of a controlled substance and..."
At this point, my mother says the only thing she could think of was who she could get to ride to the jail with her.... Billy Joe Waldrup or Jerry Grissom. She wanted one of them (they're both really big men) to beat the hell out of me, because she didn't think my father would do it properly. To fully appreciate the situation, you also need to know that I was employed as the part-time choir director at a Baptist church. A nice drug bust at this time would've been....awkward.
Then Scott, still in character as Officer John Jakes, said "Mrs. BlahBlah, would you like to speak to Allen?"
I could hear her on the phone from halfway across the room. "YES I WOULD."
"Mama?" I said.
"ALLEN? IS THAT YOU THEY'VE LOCKED UP, ALLEN?"
"Yes," I said. "I just want to tell you something."
"WHAT? WHAT? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO TELL ME?"
"April Fools," I said.
That was 25 years ago. She's never done another April Fool's joke. Not on me, anyway.
2 comments:
My husband and I laughed our asses off over this! The only thing funnier today was the Rebulican Budget!
Your April Fools 1983 was much better than ours. My husband of not quite a year called right before midnight saying he had fallen at work, broken his collar bone, and I needed to take him to the ER. I told him it wasn't funny and he said he wasn't joking!
My cousin, grandmother and myself went to Las Vegas for a long weekend of gambling and shows. We had a great time and came up with a brilliant idea. We stopped on our way home to California in another town in the middle of the desert. We found a man sitting at the bar by himself. Bribed him with alcohol. He eventually agreed to call my uncle Mike. He told my Uncle that he was from the Las Vegas police department and that the three of us had been arrested for prostitution. We needed to be bonded out...and then he hung up.
We finished our drive home...laughing all of the way. We pulled up in my Uncle's driveway...He was pissed. Apparently, they had called every branch of law enforcement in and around Las Vegas...and of course there was no record of our arrest...It was priceless...Like my grandmother would be mistaken for a Las Vegas hooker...
Post a Comment