April Fools with Pop

At 8:30 this morning my favorite "evil" cousin called and pulled a doozy of an April Fools joke on me. She's famous for them. I can't tell you what she said, but it had all the necessary elements required to pull off a good AF: believability, a sincere delivery, and most of all it has to hit you where you live! After congratulating her, I remembered to get my mother, like I do every year. 

Never thinking anyone would purposefully lie to her, especially me, my Mom can be as believing as a child. I got her good, but not as good as the very first AF I performed when I was eight years old...

Due to difficult situations involving my father, my Mom was forced to move us around quite often for our safety. Hey, this was the 70's, a lot of people were exercising their freedom of choice with drugs, alcohol, horrid fashion and really bad music. After things died down for a year or so and I hadn't heard or seen my paternal figure for a while, April 1st rolled around.

The morning of, I ran up to my sweet Mum while she was washing dishes, and with eyes full of fear, panting for breath I said, "MOM! DAD'S HERE!" I will never forget her face. Utter panic. Yes, I know it was cruel! And I felt bad after I said it, so I vowed to myself that all future AF jokes would be less dramatic and more on the comical side.

My father or Pop as I call him, is like a big teddy bear now, and has no recollection whatsoever of anything he did from the years 1971-79. It's all one big psychedelic blur to him. Plus, we've all forgiven him. It's not hard to when he looks at you with those sad, watery, brown eyes. Today, April Fool's Day I went out to breakfast with Pop.

I drove to his apartment, which is in a not-so-safe neighborhood around 159th Ave. (He simply can't leave his old stomping grounds, no matter how dangerous it has gotten...too loyal I guess) I couldn't figure out how to get into his gated parking lot, so I called him (panting for breath) and said two guys were refusing to let me in unless he paid them 100 dollars! All I heard was, "Rachel?.....Rachel is that you?" Never mind.

Oh well, at least we were going to Mama's Royal Cafe, my favorite breakfast joint on the planet. Tony and I have been frequenting Mama's since we were dating at 22 and 21 years old, respectively. In brief, the place has serious sentimental value for us. I thought I'd take Pop there.

Luckily, we got a booth which has an old nickel music box on the wall that doesn't work, a small black door bell you can push and nothing happens, and tall mahogany benches that are covered with engravings and initials like T+R 1991...Rich "heart's" Lenore 1988..."Love is leaf-like"... It's great. Above us were a dozen aprons you would expect a 1950's housewife to wear. Pop was admiring the general splendor while I beamed with pride, then he asked me if I wanted to carve something into the wood. "Sure." I said. He handed me an old Gerber knife with two small blades that his Dad gave him. It was an adorable gesture. He watched me as I carved SAM, then a heart. "So artistic." He said admiringly. I smiled at him.

Yes, I love my Dad...no fooling.