Off with it all...on April´s day

Off with it all…on April´´ s day !

Oh well, I might as well admit it. It was my idea from the start. I was very tired of my poor imagination when it came to fooling other people. Odd if you ask me, as I was born on April the first.

It was like life itself liked to play pun and pranks with me. And I was a victim to stupidity. Yes very weird.

I can recall my birthdays as a child. All those endless parcels with nothing in the silly li´l box. I had to make myself laught, just because of it. It belonged to the habit of the day. Be happy as you are made a fool!

So that day, 2017, I made up my mind. It was back in that oh-how-lovely-place-among-so-called-friends of mine. Not that they were idiots, but theý had gathered lots of diagnosis on themselves throughout their lives. I brought them all together and told them that my sister was coming to visit me at that place, that was named ´Sunflower`. It was a place that the community paid for, so to speak within the economy of Swedish Social laws. Something like that. The law of the local politicians had to be equal and let people with different problems gather at a day-center for – well, for all of us. I told them I had a joke on my mind and I had two victims for it. My sister Mona-Lin – and! They took my idea to their very hearts and said to me that I had come up with a brilliant practical joke. Or I guess. British people are severly clever when it comes to be practical in joking. Swedish people on the other hand are more down to earth. We don´t play games in the same way. But this was my birthday and all. I had to make it brilliant. For all of us.

One of the girl who worked at ´Sunflower`was not among us disabled people, so I had told her nothing about what our joke should be about. She knew nothing. But the rest was in tune with my game. They shared my secret, they were more than that. They had to play on my side of it. They said nothing to Sarah, but smiled in that scorn way. Great. A scorn is just about what a fool can take. And I was not the fool of this day. Not today. I made up my victims and had them under my spell. For sure….

I told Sarah, the one who worked there, that my sister was in for BODY-ACTIVISM.

Don´t really know if it is common throughout the world, but in the land of Socialistic tradition we like to try out equal things. And what could be better than building up a story that my sister had started off a Facebook-group that played out philosophies about that all bodies are equal? All bodies are worth something. All what we have with legs, bums, tits, penises and vagina and stomachs, well all parts of our bodies have to be shown off with pride and honour. No, my sister had no such Facebook-group. Wasn´t I brilliant? More than that? Just get it to them! Silly generations if you ask me. I hated all that was about activism. I did not like showing off with my hips, although they might have been a net for men´s gaze in my youth. Now I was not exactly fat, but very well. A bit big in size. And as I saw it. Big in conclusions.

Before telling Sarah about all this I had phoned my Sister Mona-Lin and have said that there was a girl who wished to tell her about her looks. Very well. And then I by a chance happend to throw up a sentence that the cake was to expensive, so I would just serve coffee. Very well then. But her looks? My sister said it was all okey with her. So now I had to introduce Sarah to my sister Mona-Lin. (A look could be activism as well. No?)

I talked and talked about the activism over and over with Sarah as we headed for the small shopping-centre at Dalbo square. Small place with lots of immigrants. We passed them by, me chatting about that Sarah had to know how proud my sister was that so many women and girls followed her on Facebook. Swell. We popped in to buy that cake, although I had lied and said there would be no cake. I had ordered it in advance. They gave me it wrapped up in a silk-looking-paper. A golden touch. It suited my day of pride. I had to enjoy it. And my friends back at ´Sunflower`were waiting. More for the coffee and the cake than for being part of a bunch of fools about to bring a lie out into the open air.

I took the cake, forgot to pay. No one noticed, not even the machine that let a ringing tone adress the costumer that a theft is about to happen. But no ringing tone was heard. So I gave it no thought.

We then went to the car-park, Sarah and me. Well you know she is really in for it, I said. She has her own thing going on. All bodies have to be able to be shown to the world.

There she was. Beside her blue car. And dressed in her working suit, or what else they call it. Suits her on my day! Her clothes could be part of a kind of activism I presume.

I introduced them and had them begin talking about bodies that ought to have some sort of philosophy. They both agreed to that. How smooth it all worked. Now I had to bring them to my company of people at ´Sunflower`, all those I had given strict information of how to behave, what to say, and that and this and hither and all the rest. They were my gang of some kind of friends, although not always talkative or not at all educated. People with diagnosis. People I had come to like. I had instructed them how to yell the Swedish word, the words that declared that someone had been fooled. I was eager to hear them say it. I was eager to notice the face of my sister and of Sarah, pretty li´l Sarah, who worked so hard taking care of us, although she was young.

Oh how well they came to get to know one another, my sister and Sarah. Never mind. I should explain later that Mona-Lin had no such Facebook-group.

We stepped in. Took the stairs in a jumping manner, gayly happy and all those sorts of spring feelings that had arose in the air. How smooth. Such a brilliant person I was.

And we opened the door leading into the holiest of places. ´Sunflower.`The renown place among the community of my home city.

Sarah and my sister went into the livingroom before me, as I took the cake to the kitchen. I placed it on the kitchen table. I heard all of a sudden a laughter. A sound that came from a bunch of mouths in the same way. ”April. April to you Lisa!” What? Lisa? Me? Why should I be the fool as usual? It was my idea. I had to stalk into the livingroom. There stood my friends. They had been taken off all their clothes, except the underwear. Almost nude. And that laughter aimed at me. So I was – fooled by my own idea?

At that point it meant less if my sister had a Facebook-group or not. And those silly friends of mine took photos of themselves and published them on my own Facebook-page.

What was I to say? Had my joke been taken too far or was it like the saying goes: ”If you dig a hole you might fall down there yourself.”

I had digged a hole. And when I grabbed for the cake I noticed that the box was empty and someone had placed a piece of paper with a text written on it. ”April April, all fool´s day.” But it was a small comfort that I had not at least paid for it. And I had to remember that I had promised my sister there would be no cake. Sometimes lies turn out to be the truth we have to face…

When coming home I saw that my other friends in the county, and the rest of the world, had seen the bunch standing there, on photos of my own Facebook-page. With underwear, almost nude. And a big text: ”WE LIKE BODY-ACTIVISM AT ´SUNFLOWER.`”

How did I feel at that moment? Well, as I said. I am born on April the first. That is no joke. Anyone can check it up in our Folk-register in Sweden. We have such a register. Had I been born twenty minutes earlier I had been born on another date. But now I felt that kiddin´ and joking was a silly li´l game all over the place. If there is such a thing as reincarnation my karma must have meant that I was to be born on April the first. But then again. Next year I must surpass myself. I shall sit here for a year or so to figure out the next practical joke. It has to go my way next time...If not?

Well, well. If not. That day is that sorrow, as we say in Sweden. What else?