No Jokes on Socks

There was no grand denouement to the creative death-threat incident, yesterday. I'm a little disappointed. I had hoped--well, you know how it is. I put so much effort into April Fool's. All through March, I'm beavering away, writing and researching and posting things all over the Internet, in hopes of starting April with a bang. Then, the big day arrives. Everything goes off beautifully. It's wonderful, and everybody's laughing, and I'm babbling my triumph to anyone who will listen--but something's missing. See, all through March, I've also been hoping. Maybe this'll be the year when someone, perhaps in the spirit of revenge, gets me a good one. I'm naïve! I'm gullible! Pick me! Gawn, prank the prankster. You know you want to. Wouldn't it be brilliant to watch everyone laughing at me, for a change?

But it never happens. Maybe I'm not famous enough. The death-threat was just a death-threat. The 3,000 overnight hits to my website were just my Russian fans stealing bandwidth. The underpants on my doorknob were just a silly dream I had.

A strange thing did happen last month, while I was off pretending to be Howard Glassman. Two policemen came over, looking for my landlord. They wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't know where he lived, and insisted on coming in and watching me look for the lease. I couldn't find it, of course. I've been living here more than a year, now. Strata of untidiness have evolved. There are paper layers, and crusty-plate layers, and important-things-I'll-never-find layers, and maybe even living-things layers. The lease could be anywhere. It could even be nowhere. I could have thrown it out. I could have used it to clean up something manky. Anything can happen in a year.

At any rate, the police got tired of waiting around, after a while. I gave them a phone number that might've belonged to my landlord, and they went away. I hope I didn't send them to the doctor, or the lady who takes my birds to the vet. It's probably illegal to mislead a police officer, even by accident.

Nothing else happened to me all month, except that I saw a really odd bird. It was a wee browny long-legged thing, strutting about Burrard Street like the lord of the realm. It had a long, thin beak, and black, shiny eyes. I have no idea what it was. It wasn't on any of my birdlists. Maybe it was a very small plover. (Though, what would that be doing here?) I'm perplexed. More perplexed than usual, even.

Speaking of bewildering things, I wasn't going to bother filing tax forms this year. I made so little money I don't owe the government a bean. So, I was going along nicely, glad to be free of that obligation, when I had to go and say something to Mother. She started howling about how I'd get GST money back if I filed a claim, so now I've got to go prospecting through my garbage-strata in search of financial records. What a pain! Maybe I'll just pretend to do it, and tell her I did. I'll make extra money this year, and say I got it from the government. (That won't end badly. Not at all!)

Oh, it's probably too late for taxes, anyway. Who does taxes in April? Nobody, that's who. Everyone I know did theirs in...in January, I think.

All of the above, of course, goes to show that I'm an idiot. Mrs. A. Rhed, that's me. Nothing between the ears but whooshing wind. Perfect target for an April Fool's prank, what?

Well, maybe next year.