My Daughter the Fooler

"Oh, silly Daddy, it can't be a new egg. Dinosaurs finished just like in the movie, a long time ago. Go on, get the hammer so we can break open the egg and see if it's real."

"Jess, don't you think that maybe we should ring someone at the museum and see if we need to take it to them? They might have to look at the egg and see if it's real?"

Jess looked at her mother and then at me, and half whispered, "Wouldn't we be able to look inside it and see if it is real, Daddy. Anyway, what if it is only a rock, we would look pretty silly if we took it to the Museum and I told them we had found a dinosaur egg, and it was only a rock."

"You know what, kitten, I think you're right. We should just finish digging the hole and then smash the rock, what do think?"

Marion looked at me and raised her eyebrows in that, "I think you'd better do as she asks honey," with the emphasis on 'honey'.

"Alright Jess, let me get a hammer and we'll see what is in the egg or if it is just a rock.

I retrieved a hammer and tapped gently near the middle of the egg, or rock, or whatever it was, rotating it as I did. A claylike crust fell off revealing a coloured egg made of something like icing sugar and blue in colour. "Look Daddy, it's an egg," she squealed, "Break it open Daddy, see what's inside it."

Another tap with the hammer near the middle of the egg, and it broke into several pieces into my hand. Inside it were two small plastic dinosaurs, one green, one blue.

"Look Daddy, see I told you, it was a dinosaur egg and there are two, twins," she excitedly yelled, and to her mother, "See Mummy, like I said, I knew today was special."

I looked at two of the most important people in my life, and winked at Marion and asked Jessie, "Do you know what today is?"

"Yes Daddy, it's my birthday."

"Mmm, what else? Do you know the name of today, and I don't mean it's Jessie's birthday either?"

"Yes Daddy, it's April Fool's Day, isn't it."

I looked at my little lovebug, and said, "It sure is, and I guess I've been the April Fool, haven't I?"

"Oh Daddy, don't be mad. I was just having some fun with Mummy and you. You're not really angry are you?"

Jessie looked as though she was on the verge of tears, and I picked her up and squeezing her to me, I whispered, "How could I be angry with my little kitten, but you wait because next year, I just might get you to be the April Fool."

We planted the tree and when it was tall enough we made a rope swing complete with a tyre.

Over the next few years, Jessie and I would try and outdo each other in japes and gags, and on her fourteenth birthday, Jessie pulled off what was to become folklore in the annals of the Repton family.

Jessie like all teens of the era had her various on-line social media accounts, and she was particularly adept at setting up her peers with suspect gags and videos, until she had them scurrying about like demented chooks.

This particular time she posted some photos of rather decrepit, almost dead, trees with a few, though not many, strings of spaghetti hanging from dead or dying branches. She accompanied those with lurid, and very descriptive, articles presented in such a way that they could have been printed in a newspaper describing how the local farmers were bemoaning the failure of the annual spaghetti crop, and that when current supplies ran out, that a decent spag bol (bolognaise) might be a thing of the past unless a decent crop was forthcoming the next year.

I thought it was brilliant, and took a lot of guts to do, but although my daughter was up to the task of presenting a decent joke on the family and wreaking much havoc until the joke was discovered, this effort took us all by surprise. The whole local area was taken in, then the suburb, and so it expanded at such an exponential rate that we were all, including Jessie, absolutely gob-smacked, especially at how the seemingly most intelligent of people could be taken in by what should have obviously been seen as an April Fool gag.

The news went viral and appeared as a second lead story on the evening statewide news, and then National news. Sales of spaghetti went through the roof, and people were marching out the doors of the major grocery chains with trolleys filled with as much of the stuff as possible. Sales of mince was similarly affected - well you can't have spag bol without mince, can you. People were fighting and arguing in the shopping aisles just to get a packet of the stuff al la the Covid dramas when people walked out of stores with several large packs of toilet paper at a time, stow it in their car or whatever, and then go back for more. In fact, one contemporary of mine suggested that if someone walked out of a shop with several packets of 144 rolls of toilet paper at a time, then they might have a serious medical issue and should get seen to immediately.

We all sat watching the news the next evening with another story highlighting the 'Great Spaghetti Shortage' trying to work out how we could remedy the situation. The next day, we were still at a loss about what to do and several hours were spent trying to nut out how to expose the lie without getting into trouble ourselves, or more importantly Jess not getting into some sort of legal bunfight, after all it was an April Fool gag that somehow got out of hand.

That evening we were sat around the idiot box watching the nightly news, when an interview with a so-called spaghetti farmer revealed where it came from, how it was made, and so on with the reporter, and the manufacturer of a local brand of home-grown spaghetti, all attempting to keep a straight face while the great 'lie' was revealed. The manufacturer of course had had to start a separate shift at the factory just so he could keep up with the demand and if one looked closely, you could see the dollar signs rolling around in his eyes, like the tumblers on a poker machine.

What, or rather who, had started the tale was not known, and to our great relief, the source had obviously not been checked nor had any sort of investigation been started, so it wasn't able to be traced back to our beloved Jess. Eventually the matter disappeared from the lives of the gullible, however we did wonder what some people did with the boxes of spaghetti that they had panic bought at the height of the drama. We did notice however the shelves of the local supermarket were still being cleared at an alarming rate well into the next month.

The next year, Jess was suitably circumspect with her April Fool activities, and it was all very innocent, family only gags, such as half an Easter Egg wrapped in foil, or perhaps some hot cross buns toasted and smeared with Vegemite instead of jam, that sort of thing, nothing to get anxious about.

One day, out of the blue, Marion announced that our little girl was going to be 17 and we needed to think about getting her a car so she could get about once she got her licence. Jessie received her new car, well new to her, but in reality a three old second hand Toyota Corolla sedan, learnt to drive in it and a few days after her birthday, sat for her driving test, which I am proud to say, she passed with flying colours.

Jess was the ultimate careful driver. The car was serviced, cleaned, and generally pampered so much, and often, that her mother and I were surprised that she even took it out of the driveway. She did and would immediately seek to rectify the dirt it had acquired in its two-kilometre drive to the university and back or however far she went, until it was spotless once again.

While our daughter and eldest star of our lives was as enamoured of her car as any car owner should be, she really knew nothing about them. So, while she was extremely capable as one of the best drivers on the roads, she relied absolutely on others doing the maintenance and servicing of it.

To this end we introduced her to Mitch at the local service centre. Mitch checked the car out, did its first service under her ownership, and declared the car a suitable means of conveyance for our child.

It was about the end of February that Marion and I started to work out how we could get Jess to really be the brunt of a gag, suitably public enough to be embarrassing but not such she would be ridiculed, but certainly would feel the amusement of the family at her, albeit mild, expense.

Over the years, I had acquired many friends and acquaintances, through work, our social life, tennis, youth clubs and the like. I made the necessary arrangements without telling a soul, except for those who would be intimately involved in one way or another.

I did tell Marion of course, I didn't want to get killed after the event, especially as we had planned the whole thing together from the start.

I planned to have the car serviced on April 1^st, the only day there was a vacancy at the auto shop (so we informed Jess the week before), which meant that some juggling of cars was involved. Then Jessie reported that she was staying home on her birthday 'because we were all going out to dinner that evening, and she and Mum had to get ready.' Excellent, no juggling of cars, and the day would proceed even better than I had hoped.

Her car was duly delivered at 8.00 am and the keys given to the receptionist. When I had arranged the booking, I spoke with the mechanic, another mate of mine and appraised him of what was about to take place. The plan amused him greatly and given that he too had been on the receiving end of one or three of Jess's japes, thought this would a suitable payback. He came up with a list of items which would be more than suitable to confuse poor Jessie regarding the state of the car and the work that needed to be done. The list was then passed to Mike at the radio station.

When Marion and I were planning this, we determined that the radio couldn't be on in our place because then Jess would hear and catch on immediately, so Marion went next door to our very good friends and neighbours, Colin, and Betty, and listened there. Besides, there was no way that Jess would listen to 'the Old's station', so there no remote way she would have the radio tuned to Mike at all. Colin and Betty had been brought into the joke as well because at times in the past, they too had been the brunt of Jess's gags.

I took Jessie home and drove to my office which was about 20 minutes away. At around 9.15, I received the expected phone call from my mate, Michael Brown, radio host of the morning show on one of the FM stations that operated in the area. I can't tell you which one, I might want to do this again LOL. Mike said, "Okay I'll put you on standby so that you can hear what's going on, but you won't be heard by anyone else, until I bring you in a bit later." There was soft click and then I could hear his program that was going to air. Mike then rang Marion who was by now at the next-door neighbours, Colin, and Betty, and the same procedure was put in place.

I then heard the sound of a telephone ring tone, and realised it was Mike ringing Jess on her mobile phone. After the fourth ring, she answered in her usual ebullient manner, "Hello, this is Jess."

The conversation then went something like this:

"Hello, is this Jessie Repton, you own the Toyota brought in today for a service?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Okay, that's great. This is Mitch the mechanic here, I need to talk to you about your car and get permission to do a few things before I start, so I'll tell you what needs to be done and give you a price at the end. Is that okay?"

"Oh, Yes I suppose. Is there a lot of work that needs to be done? You know I don't have a lot of money and I don't want to upset my dad because I might need to get him to help me pay for the service."

"Well, there are a few things, but not all that expensive really, and of course the car will be top notch when we've finished."

"Okay then, what are they?"

"Right, the first one is that the lumen ratio and storage is really down, and we need to sort that out else you won't be able to use the headlights and see really well at night. So, I need to add more lumens and also charge the lumen storage, and that'll take all day, so the car won't be ready until about 4.00pm. I hope you don't need it before that do you?"

"Oh no, I guess not."

Also, I need to replace the red in the taillights, The lens are fine, but the red is an old model colour, so I need to change that to fit in with the current law, so I have to get some more red and fix it. It's not difficult but it does take a couple of hours to do."

"Oh, I didn't know about that. Are all cars the same?"

"No, only your model Corolla is affected. You probably didn't know about the mass Toyota recall, then."

"Well, I did hear something about that, but I thought that was only for the airbags or something. I got those checked but no-one said anything about the wrong red colour."

"No, the law hadn't changed then probably, so that's why we are just starting to catch up with that stuff now."

"Oh okay."

"Good, now the H₂O storage facility seems to have a fairly large hole in it at the top. We found that when we removed the rubber connectivity appurtenance, so we'll need to replace that as well. The next thing is the Lio cap needs replacing.........."

"Wait, wait, what was that rubber connectivity thingo you said? Is that expensive?"

"Oh well it can be, but I'm trying to get an aftermarket one which should reduce the price quite markedly for you."

"I see, and what's the Lio cap?"

"Oh well, that's used to assist to maintain the viscous solution to its maximum ability to exploit its usage and suitability to keep the rotational contrivance operating to its full potential. The next thing.........."

"Sorry," Jess asked, "What was that you just said?"

"What the viscous sol...."

"No, not that," she interrupted, "The rotational whatever, what's that?"

"Oh, that's necessary to keep the car mobile. If that doesn't work properly, you won't get anywhere at all. In fact, that's really the most fundamental part of the car."

"Oh, alright."

I could hear in Jess's voice that she was really starting to worry about the car and particularly how much it was going to cost to get all the servicing done, but so far she was stoic, and not really getting too upset.

"Okay, next thing we need to do is recharge the atmospheric pressurised containers. That won't take very long, and while we do that we also check that the attachment capability is still present and doesn't need to be upgraded to new units with improved capability for you. Depending upon........."

Jess interrupted again, "What do you mean improved attachment capability? What's that and what does it do?"

"Oh, well it's unequivocally required for good operation of the car and of course, necessary for your all-round safety and driving pleasure. You have a really great little car there, and we need to do this work to ensure you get many years of reliable motoring out of it."

"I see, okay, what's next then?" This was asked in a tone slightly less than complete resignation that the whole exercise was going to cost a small fortune, and I could hear the tremor in her voice.

"Well, I think the last really major item is that the overhead, underslung, oscillating decravinator needs to be serviced. To do that we need to hoist the car so that we can check and correct any issues we find with it."

"Does that need to be done, it sounds expensive, and what do you mean 'hoist the car'? How do you do that, do you need a crane or something?"

"Oh no, we have a small hoist in the workshop we use. We put the arms under the car and lift it up. We have to make sure that it doesn't fall off of course, but that's only happened a few times and we are very careful."

"Do you have to do that, I mean what if my car falls off, I won't have anything to get to university in, and Mum and Dad bought it for my birthday, I couldn't lose my car like that.........." And I distinctly heard the tears now finding their way down my daughter's face. I tried to get someone's attention on the phone but couldn't of course and now I wished that we hadn't started this. I really didn't know that my little girl would be so distraught, and I wanted to hold her and tell it was just an April Fool gag on her.

Jess then took a deep breath and whispered, "How, ......how much will all of this cost?"

"Well, I've a done a quick working out, and the whole lot should come in at around $1540 including GST."

"What, oh heavens I can't afford all that. I'll to ask Mum and Dad if they can help, is it really that much?" she whispered and the tremor in her voice alerted me to the fact that she was about to break down in tears.

"Oh well, if you ask Mum, Dad, Uncle Colin and Aunt Betty, and maybe your father's friend Michael at the radio station, you might not need to pay anything."

"What, what are talking about. How can I ask all of them to pay?"

When we asked Michael if he could help us set up the gag, he asked me where Marion would be. He then suggested that she also be on the phone listening as well, and when it was time we could bring everyone into the show.

Another quiet click and I heard a voice in my phone that said, "You're live on air, you can talk to Jess now."

Mike then commented, "Jess, the total cost to you is nothing and that's because this is Mike from the radio station, and I've got your Mum and Dad, Uncle Colin and Aunt Betty listening in and we all really just want to say on the count of three, one, two, three, "April Fool Jess, from all of us."

"What, what did you say, what do you mean April Fool? All of those things you said about my car, isn't any of that true?"

"No."

Jess then asked, "Is my little car okay, really?"

"Jess, on my honour, your car is fine, it is really one of the best little cars on the road. Oh, by the way we are taking care of the service bill for being such a great sport as well."

"I don't know what to say, so I'm the April Fool. I guess you got me really good, huh. I'm just so glad that my little car is okay, and especially I don't have to hit Dad up for money, you know I really owe them heaps already don't you."

"I guess you do Jess, with uni fees and everything. Anyway, because you have been such a great Foolee from all of us Foolers, we are sending you, your Mum and Dad, as well as Uncle Colin and Aunt Betty and including your sisters and brother, not me unfortunately, I have to stay here and run the station, for an all paid 7 day 6 nights holiday to the south coast holiday village courtesy of all of us here at the local FM radio station and the South Coast Holiday Village. Err you'll get your meals included and they will compliment you water skiing, and jet boats while you're there."

"Are you serious, this'll be great we can really have a holiday together, thanks, really thanks, I mean Mum and Dad, and Uncle and Aunt, we never really had a nice holiday like this, all of us and our uncle and Aunt, thank you, just thank you."

The blubbering started so I said, "Jess, it's dad. It's okay, you know we love you and I hope you still love us. You know we wouldn't really do anything to hurt you, don't you?"

"Dad, where are you, I thought you were at work."

"I am kitten, and Mum and Aunt Betty, Uncle Colin, they're listening as well."

"Mum, you there as well with Dad?"

"No, Angel, I'm at Aunt Betty's place with Uncle Colin. We've been listening to the whole call as well."

"Oh wow. What about the rest of the herd, are they in on it as well?"

I spoke up and told my little girl, "Aah no, they wouldn't...couldn't keep anything like this a secret, they would have said something and then you would have prised the whole story out of them."

"Yeah, I guess so Dad, and I have to say, you got me good. But fair warning, I'm going to get everyone back for this next year, so watch out."