Last April Fool's Day I thought it would be slightly humorous and certainly surprising if I jumped out of a cake naked when my honey came home. The joke was my body itself, as it has been years since I was underweight and in front of a camera, and I am now what is kindly referred to as "out of shape." I rarely flinch at making myself the dimpled butt of a joke and am determined to reach for said joke before anyone else does.

I called all the rental places in the city looking for a giant cardboard cake. After several confusing conversations about bakeries and mechanical rakes and two salacious come-ons, I finally found a pop-out cake to rent. The store manager offered to throw in blinking-light pasties for free, but I declined. I tied down the huge, pink, three-tiered cake in the bed of my truck and slowly made my way home by the back roads.

I was singing along to Abba blasting from my speakers, and the cake was obscuring my rear view, so I didn't hear the siren or see the flashing lights right away. "Like a bang! A booma boomerang, dum be dum dum... oh, crap, it's a cop." I pulled over, remembering from the last time not to step out of the vehicle unless told to do so. Duty boots really hurt when they're slammed into the small of one's back.

"Do you know why I stopped you?" asked the officer. I fixed my hair in his mirrored sunglasses. Obviously I'd been stopped because I'm so cute. "You're only driving five miles an hour above the speed limit, which is overly cautious in this town. I'm going to have to cite you for driving under the influence... of cake. April Fool's! Haw, haw, haw," he laughed, getting back into his cruiser and driving away. I would have offered him a puff of skunk, but he seemed to have already partaken.

I arrived home before my honey and dragged the cake into the house, careful not to get stuck in the open trenches the plumber had dug into the rock and red clay. The plumber had been promising to finish his job for several weeks, and he was, once again, nowhere to be found. The plumber's absence would serve my purposes that day, however, as I jiggled around the house naked, getting everything ready for my surprise.

The TV dinners were in the oven, the box of wine was on the table, and I was crouched inside the cake in my altogethers, waiting to hear the key in the lock. It was very quiet. It was very quiet for a long time. I began to sweat. It smelled as if many other people of varying degrees of personal hygiene had been sweating inside the box, too. The sweat plastered my hair to the sides of my face and trickled down my ribs. Finally, I heard the sound of keys and the opening of the front door.

I leapt to my feet, popping off the top of the cake and spreading my arms above my head. I yelled "April Fool's!" just at the moment the plumber walked in the door behind my shocked honey. For several paralyzed seconds I stared at the plumber, who was not looking at my face. I dropped back down into the cake in utter mortification. A few moments later, my Scooby-Doo robe landed on my head, and I found a way to wiggle into it without raising up.

The plumber knocked on the cake. "My boys are finishing up the work outside now," he said. I slowly poked my head above the rim of the cake. "The pipes are hooked up, and I'm writing out the bill. It's going to be a hundred dollars for all the work."

"Really?" I said, standing up out of the cake.

"Nah," he said, "April Fool's. It's twenty-four hundred dollars. I don't take credit cards, but I do take liens."

After the plumber left and I was on my third glass of Freiherr von Badewasser, the phone rang. It was my mother, and she was crying. "Your father and I are getting a divorce," she said.

I said, "Again? Did you two not learn the first time?" I apologized for my tone when she sobbed harder.

"He has been seeing this fusion chef, and they are going away to Fiji together."

"Oh, Mom, that's horrible. How can he do this to -- wait. My dad? Mr. All-You-Can-Eat Buffet And Pie is seeing a fusion chef?"

"And part-time sommelier." She wept.

"Hold up. Mr. Hudy Delight Beer is seeing a part-time sommelier?" This was not making sense.

"April Fool's!" my mother laughed. Of course. I knew my dad wouldn't leave my mom for another woman. He might wander off with a 1965 Ford Galaxie 500XL for a little while, but not with a living, breathing woman who wants stuff.

Since she was in such a great mood, I decided to come clean about a few things I'd been doing. Hesitating just a little, I told her I'd finally gotten that knitting skeleton tattoo on my chest and that I'd been signed on to the Jell-O Wrestling for Jesus team. I was thinking of going with Salomé as my stage name and wondering where I could get a bleeding head to go with my outfit.

"That sounds like fun," my mom said. "Maybe your father and I will bring your Pentecostal Holiness grandfather to see your little show. After we find a kennel to keep the howler monkeys, that is. Well, I must be going. There's a fire in the kitchen. Oh, and I've written you out of the will. Bye."

"Ha ha ha huh... um, Mom?"

Shit, which part of any of that was true? I hate April Fool's Day.