Last night, while brushing his teeth before bed, Alex had an epiphany. "Tomorrow is April Fool's day," he said to Chris.
"Oh, yeah," Chris whispered. I could tell the wheels were turning in his head when his tongue peeked out the side of his mouth, an unconscious habit of his that helps him do everything better.
The two scurried off and for a while I could hear sounds of busy mischief-making. I turned to Chuck and said, "Crap, they're getting old enough to invent some pretty good April Fool's pranks."
"Yep, and don't forget they have you as their teacher," he said.
A while later they came into our bedroom to say goodnight. "Don't go into the kitchen until morning," Chris said.
"Oh? Why's that?" I asked.
"We've set up some boogie traps for you and Dad."
"Boogie traps? You mean booby traps."
"We say boogie traps because the other is a bad word."
"A bad word?" I asked, curious to learn what they know that I don't know, "How do you know it's a bad word? What does it mean?"
"It's what you call someone who is...who you...who..."
"Who you think is acting like the 's-word'?"
"Yes! It's not nice to call someone that."
This morning, I woke to find all sorts of clever Rube Goldberg contraptions - a string tied to the stem of a strategically placed apple, attached to a wooden spoon catapult loaded with a rock; an inflatable ball attached to a string stretched across the path to my computer; the refrigerator door taped shut, etc.
The best one was the tape securing the vegetable sprayer at the sink in it's "on" position. I fell for that one. Always appreciative of a good joke, though, I decided to leave the tape in place for the next victim.
Unfortunately, I was the next one to use the sink and in the span of no more than five minutes had forgotten my own clever plot. Good one.
Paybacks are a b-word.