April FAILS

I really love holidays. Sarcasm aside, I genuinely feel that they bring people together in a way that, say, August 14th or something fails to do. People are cheerful when they're buying presents, or drinking a lot, or wearing silly sweaters, or pinching each other. Having something in common makes us more conspiratorial, and that makes life feel more like a movie. And I'm autistic, so I can only identify with feelings that I've closely studied in Cameron Diaz movies. Anyway. The one holiday I can't stand is April Fools. I'll even take the one where I can't eat all day - is it Rosh Hashanah? I forget. I'm a bad jew. - over this garbage.

Look, I'm the most gullible person on the planet. I think it comes from all my psychological disorders. No matter how strongly I comprehend, logically, that something isn't true, a tiny part of my brain goes Wait, wait, what if you're wrong this time! What if they really DID take gullible out of the dictionary? What if there really IS a spider on your face? Better check. Once, my high school boyfriend pinched me because I wasn't wearing green. I was PISSED, not because it hurt so much, but because I love St Patrick's Day and I never fail to wear at least green underwear or sparkly eye shadow or something (Note: I'm 8 years old). It took me hours to realize it was October.

So I've always hated April Fools. I always get mad at people, because they always trick me even when I specifically ask them not to. Duh. This morning I was furious when I found out Merlin Mann wasn't really following me - wtf Twitter? That shit's not nice. But the worst 4/1 I ever had was my junior year of college. It's mostly a long, complicated, dramatic, irrelevant story, but the short version is that I drove down to Beverly Hills to visit a boy over my spring break. It was a long drive, I'd never been there before, I was staying at his house with his whole family, I had just met him 2 weeks previously, oh and I had a boyfriend back in Santa Cruz - I felt really vulnerable. We were having a great time, until he had to take me to the emergency room at 2 am. Sorry, I digress.

I woke up the morning after the ER, feeling exhausted and sick and sorry that he'd had to deal with my drama (although he was very nice about it, and loved me, so I figured he didn't mind). He was already awake, sitting at his desk and glaring at me. I figured he'd gotten in a fight with his parents or something, so I went to take a shower, figuring I'd give him some space. I opened the door to go back into his bedroom and he was suddenly in my face, furious. He yelled at me about how my stuff was all over his room, how rude it was to take over his space like that, how annoying it was that I had to go to the emergency room, and he said that he wanted me to leave right away. I was supposed to be there for 2 more days. Oh, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. My family had recently moved out of state, my boyfriend wouldn't let me stay at his house, and my college had a policy about not letting people stay on campus during vacations.

My eyes filling up with tears, too shocked, sad, and disgusted with myself to say anything, I started to pack my bags. He watched me, waiting until I finished to speak again. As I hoisted my bags and lifted my head to walk out of the room, I noticed him looking at me with a nervous smile. "What the hell are you smiling at," I snarled, tears still dripping down my cheeks.

He shrugged and spread his hands out, sheepishly.

"April Fools?"

I collapsed, sobbing, and couldn't be consoled for hours. We never quite worked out.