Last night Bonnie called me to remind me it was my turn to do the post which I honestly hadn’t been thinking about because well, I am sick yet again. But I did promise her I’d get something up. So here I am at way too early in the morning typing well, something.
You see, which is usually the case, I had no idea what to write about. This had me spending the next hour or so after she called trying to generate an idea. Not coming up with one, I felt getting some sleep and working on it this morning might help.
It was as I was preparing to get into bed that a thought occurred to me. You see I had just been updating my planner, so it was prepared to handle this new month. I realized that today is April 1st. In other words, April Fool’s Day.
Now I have never been into playing pranks on people. In fact, the inane antics of the males in our family when I was a teenager turned me completely off the whole thing. Generally, I just ignore that it’s April Fool’s Day.
However, being an identical twin Bonnie and I did try switching places. The only two times I can think of was when we were about 9 and I do not remember which one we did first, but I’ll start with Momma.
We were in the living room of our home and for some reason decided to convince our mother that she had us mixed up. It was way easier than it should have been. And far harder to convince her that we’d been pulling a prank on her. But then she was never able to completely tell us apart anyway. When we called her, as adults, the two of us would have to specifically tell her which one we were, each and every time. (For that matter, our dad was just as bad.)
Obviously, fooling our mother worked so we decided to switch places at school one day. This was one of those schools who had multiple classrooms for our grade and was among those idiotic schools who also felt separating twins was a requirement. We were in different classrooms.
That morning, I went to her class and sat in her seat participating in the lesson with her classmates. We were only a few minutes into the lesson when my teacher came to the classroom with Bonnie and switched us back. Of all the people we interacted with that morning, my teacher was the first one to figure it out.
We honestly never attempted to switch places again. And no, I don’t think either of those efforts happened on April Fool’s Day. (Don’t quote me on this because that was long enough ago that I seriously can’t remember dates.)
But this post is about April Fool’s Day, so I also remembered one event that did happen on that day.
About three years after the aforementioned events, we were at a different school (not a newsflash, we were always at a different school back then). At this school the principle understood twins and refused to place them in different classes.
Now this teacher, for whatever reason, could easily tell us apart. She simply had no issues with mixing us up, unlike our classmates who were always mixing us up.
Now the morning of April Fool’s Day we were walking to school with a friend who lived on the same block we did, and she brought up the fact it was April Fool’s Day. Neither Bonnie nor I had even remembered that fact. We had not made any efforts to switch places and didn’t think it would work anyway because our teacher could tell us apart.
That particular day must have been a switch day anyway because, other than our friend who knew we weren’t switched, every single one of our classmates had no issues getting us by the correct name that day. And our teacher? Well, she was absolutely convinced we’d switched places. I know she told us to get into our correct assigned seat at least once when we were already in our correct seats.
The one time we didn’t make any attempts to switch, everyone around us assumed we had.
Once we hit junior high school, we knew the possibility of switching at school was impossible. Mostly because our classes were different. But that’s also when other students, mostly of the male persuasion, started assuming there was only one of us. And they were constantly mad at her because I didn’t say hi to them in the hallways.
What can I say. I’m the shy one. I wasn’t about to talk to guys I didn’t know.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.
