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SALT IN THE SUGAR BOWL
By
Rick Brown
Maybe you’ve heard of this holiday they have around here because it
is really a cool idea where you get to pull tricks on people and fool
them and it happens on the first of the month and it’s not May Day
because that’s a silly holiday and all you get are May Day baskets but
what good is a May Day basket when all you do is eat and candy and then
it’s gone compared to the holiday I’m talking about, which, if you
haven’t figured it out by now isn’t Christmas either since that doesn’t
fall on the first of the month either. Except for New Year’s Day.
Maybe. No, what I’m talking about it the coolest holiday ever invented
called April Fool’s Day. You see, my little bother, Neil, did something
that was so wrong, so mean and so thoughtless that he’ll go down in the
history books as the best April Fooler possible. I call him my little
bother because Neil is really a huge bother and a little brother. But
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from someplace rather unusual
for me: the beginning.
If you haven’t figured out by now, I’m just a little kid and to a
little kid like me, there’s nothing greater than April Fool’s Day. It
is the day when you can do just about anything and then say, “April
Fools” and be forgiven for doing the meanest, dirtiest tricks possible.
Take Neil, for instance. He’s my little bother, in case you forgot. So
Neil says to me, he says: “I’ve got a great idea for April Fool’s Day.
You know how Dad loves to dip into the sugar bowl when he’s having his
morning cereal?”
Need I say more? I don’t think so because already, from the title of
this story, you can tell where this story is going because the title of
the story is “Salt In The Sugar Bowl”. But, you have to realize that
titles don’t always tell the whole story. Naturally.
What I have left out so far is Mrs. Shoemaker. Now, Mrs. Shoemaker is a
holiday genius. And to a kid like me and like my little bother, Neil,
there’s nothing more important than decorating for a holiday. But how
do you decorate for something like April Fool’s Day? Do you string
brightly colored lights across your front porch? No. Only a beginner
would do something along those lines. As I said, Mrs. Shoemaker is very
good at what she does and what she does is celebrate holidays. Any
holiday. Including April Fool’s Day.
So it was a few days before the big event and Neil and I just happen to
find ourselves over at Mrs. Shoemaker’s house. She lives just up the
block from us in that big house on the corner. Well, the reason we go
there is for the advice about the holiday and because Mrs. Shoemaker
always has a bowl of candy bars sitting in her front room, no kidding.
Now, Mrs. Shoemaker is not a tiny person. When she sweeps into the room
she looks like a bear wearing a pup tent but all that is forgiven
because our neighbor is famous for her full sized candy bars which she
is more than willing to share with us even before dinner, although we
don’t exactly ask our mother because we already know what she would say
and why ask that deep, difficult question when you already know the
answer.
But that doesn’t matter.
No, what matters is the mind of Mrs. Shoemaker. You see, it is Mrs.
Shoemaker that comes up with the idea. While Neil and I are munching on
a few candy bars, Mrs. Shoemaker wants to know what kind of foolery we
have planned for the big day. That’s when Neil tells her all about his
plan. Now his plan is just beginning to take shape but when you’re
talking to someone who is a holiday genius like Mrs. Shoemaker, it is
just fine to throw out ideas like you’re throwing out the empty candy
wrappers because Mrs. Shoemaker understands. What she understands is
way beyond me but Neil, my little bother, and our neighbor seem to
connect on a deeper level.
Neil says that he wants to replace all the sugar in the sugar bowl with
salt. That way, my Dad, who lives and breathes sugar will have a
surprise waiting for him when he has his morning cereal and his morning
coffee.
Mrs. Shoemaker’s face lights up like a super-charged Christmas display
but only this whole thing isn’t about Christmas at all because this is
a kid’s favorite holiday right behind the Fourth of July and all those
other holidays. No, our neighbor suddenly lights up and then gets very
serious and tells us that we are about to travel down a highway seldom
taken, to quote a poet I can’t remember. We are about to take April
Fool’s Day to a new level and that level is to include our neighbor,
Mrs. Shoemaker, in the trick.
So far so good. Mrs. Shoemaker whispers the plan to us so nobody else
can hear although there’s nobody else around so Neil, that’s my little
bother, and I can’t quite figure out our neighbor. Is she crazy or like
a fox. It doesn’t really matter because right now we’re stoked on
full-sized candy bars and it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is
the trick.
Fast forward to the next day which dawns bright and clear. Neil and I
look out the window and it looks like any other day although it is
April Fool’s Day and we see none other than Mrs. Shoemaker waddling
over to our house first thing in the morning which is really all part
of the plan. For a few minutes I few sorry for Dad because he is in for
such a huge surprise that I can barely stand it.
The doorbell rings and we hear Mrs. Shoemaker come in as Neil and I are
flying down the stairs from our bedrooms. Everybody is making nice like
this is a perfectly normal thing: a visit from a neighbor this time of
the day. Dad doesn’t suspect a thing.
While our Dad and Mrs. Shoemaker are chit-chatting, Neil slips into the
kitchen to do his dirty work. His hands are shaking like a leaf of
notebook paper in a wind storm or something as he empties out the sugar
bowl and fills it with salt.
And then we hear them about to come into the kitchen. Dad invites our
neighbor in for a little snack.
“Why don’t you stay for breakfast,” my Dad says and then they enter the room.
By this time Neil is a cool as a pile of chilly laundry. Mrs. Shoemaker
is all smiles and even Dad is extra chatty on this morning because it
looks like our plan is headed down the path towards tricking him beyond
all our wildest dreams which were pretty wild to start with but with
the help of Mrs. Shoemaker get even wilder beyond those dreams.
And then suddenly everything gets very stickier when Mrs. Shoemaker,
out of the blue, says something like, “You know I’m deathly allergic to
salt,” just as she’s dipping her spoon into the sugar bowl. I look at
Neil and Neil looks at me and then we see Dad about to take a huge bite
of his cereal and before I can scream out the truth, Mrs. Shoemaker has
already put her spoon back into her bowl and is about to take a bite of
the milk drenched slop.
For the longest time, everything seems normal. And then I realize time
as slowed down to the barest possible notches as seconds become hours
and minutes—don’t even go there with the minutes—seem like days. Mrs.
Shoemaker aims the first spoonful towards her mouth, looks up at me
with a witless smile upon her lips and then plunges the spoon home. For
another second she smiles at me until a helpless look washes across her
face and then she falls forward into her cereal. It was like somebody
had dropped a pumpkin onto the table. Mrs. Shoemaker’s face is down in
her bowl as Dad munches on his cereal for another faction of a second.
Suddenly his face turns the color of day old pizza and he slumps down.
I look at Neil and Neil looks at me and I look back at Neil and then my
Dad utters a word that sears my brain like a hot butter knife through
chocolate cake or something and he says, “Call 911.”
Who the heck is 911? And then it hits me: you only call that number in
the case of the most dangerous emergencies and this was one. We had two
April Fool’s Day fools down for the count. Neil walks over to the phone
like he had all day and picks it up. Before I know it, he’s talking to
someone. He says, “If you’re not busy, could you send somebody to our
house. We have a salt emergency here.”
If you’re not busy? I don’t care if they are busy or not, this is
serious as a heart attack and maybe they should put away their jigsaw
puzzle and get over here right away before I lose my allowance for the
rest of my life.
In a few heartbeats, a man flashing a badge walks into the room. He
says his name is Officer Wilson but he looks a lot like Mr. Weaver, the
choir director from our church, and he walks over to Mrs. Shoemaker and
pokes her a few times before he shakes his head and wonders out loud,
“Who did this to her?”
I’m ready to turn in my own bother, Neil, when Officer Wilson looks at
my Dad and says, “Him too? Your own father! How could you.”
Before I get a chance to answer, Mrs. Shoemaker starts chortling in her
milk. That turns into a loud guffaw and finally she can’t control the
laughter any more. That’s when my Dad, my own father, starts laughing,
too, and they both sit up and shout, “April Fool’s!” along with Neil
and the fake policeman. The whole thing has backfired on me and I am
the butt of their joke.
Only for a minute.
Before they can say much of anything, we hear the sound of a real
police car rushing to our house, siren’s blaring and the motor racing.
This time my Dad suddenly looks real serious like as his eyes slowly
find Neil, my little bother. Neil’s eyes slowly make their way to the
phone just as the woman, a real police officer this time, comes in
through the door. She announces that someone from this address called
the dispatcher on the 911 emergency line and they had to check out the
call to see if it was real. It seems that Neil made a little mistake
when he made his fake call and really called 911. Mrs. Shoemaker stands
up, milk and cereal still sliding off her face, and says it was all
mistake and if anyone is to blame, it is her since she came up with the
whole idea in the first place. So the police officer writes her a
ticket for disturbing the peace and suddenly Mrs. Shoemaker isn’t in
such a holly, jolly mood, holiday or no.
To try and change the officer’s mind, my Dad suggests a cup of coffee
so they can talk things out. The next time I turn around, the
policewoman is lifting a spoonful from the sugar bowl to dump in her
coffee. I have a sinking feeling this April Fool’s Day is about to get
a whole lot worse.
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