My First: Easter-April Fool’s Day-Birthday

Never forget Mama Krach’s face witnessing my side-splitting, gut-busting, nose-blowing, momentous April Fool’s Bday party.

Tomorrow is Easter, April Fool’s Day, and my birthday. The last time Easter fell on April 1st was in 1956 (the year before I was born), and it will only happen two more times in this century. Of course, I love the Easter Bunny. Heck, I have five kids and my three youngest still believe the Easter bunny went to Purdue. But being born on April 1st is something special.

My mom always says, “How LUCKY are you? You were born on the funniest day of the year.” As Easter Sunday approaches and I reflect, it truly has been a blessing. As my Dad would say, “Keith, being ‘an April Fool,’ insures that you will grow up with a well-developed sense of humor.” I must admit, they were spot on. Here’s a small example:

When I was a kid, my mom would always throw birthday parties for me with all my little buddies. We would play all sorts of made-up games outside, rain or snow (yes, sometimes it does snow in Rocky River, Ohio in April), and then we’d go down to the basement for a banquet of hot dogs, chips, cake, and Hawaiian Punch at the ceremonial table, comprised of 3 card tables covered by some manly paper table cloth. Those goofy, incredibly-creative dudes always played practical jokes on me, and I always got gag gifts. What little boy doesn’t just love that?

I will never forget my eight-year-old birthday party, when I was the last guy to sit down at the ceremonial birthday table and one of my pals put a whoopee cushion on my seat. Even for us, this was new technology. The noise was so funny and my buddies started laughing so hard that Hawaiian Punch came flying out of the nose of the guy sitting across from me. It shot so far that this gross, nostril-filtered red punch covered the top half of my body, including my face. It was so hysterical that all of a sudden, Hawaiian Punch started flying out of everybody’s nose. Feeling a little left out and not having had a sip of punch yet, I just couldn’t resist grabbing my cup and blowing it out of my nose too. This of course repeated the cycle with my buddies until the twelve of us had filtered 3 half-gallon cans of Hawaiian Punch through our nostrils. It was ridiculousness taken to its highest level of perfection.

I will never forget the look on Mama Krach’s face upon witnessing the aftermath of this side-splitting, gut-busting, nose-blowing, momentous banquet. Let it me put it this way: it was one of shock and awe. She just said, “You gotta be joking me”. I couldn’t help but say, “Well, you know Ma, God had me born on April fool’s day for a reason, and I don’t want to let him down.” She said, “This is no joke!” That’s when my pals joined in and said, “April Fool’s!” With a small grin, she goes, “That’s not funny.” Then it just came out of me, “Maybe when I was born God played the joke on YOU.” They all cracked up, and she gave me one of her famous all-enveloping bear hugs. And I remember thinking while I was in her embrace “Thank you, God. I got out of trouble again.”

So, on this Easter extravaganza trifecta, I thank God that I was born on April’s fool day and pray that I live long enough to experience another.