One Good Fool

Today is my birthday. I've always felt secretly pleased to have been born on a day for fools. It's like being handed a "get out of being serious for free" card. Expectations are immediately lowered. Levels of amusement markedly raised. I can be a goofball and well, we knew this would happen. The thing is, it almost didn't happen. My mother is charged with telling me my birth story every year (it is tradition), but I wonder if I shouldn't just tell it like I've heard it all these years and see if I'm right on or if I'm not as great a listener as some of my past bumper stickers have claimed. I will likely romanticize it more than she did. I will put in a few fade outs for effect. I will create a sense of urgency that the nurses may not have felt. And my mother's hair will be perfectly sprayed into a beehive I recall from one of her earliest photos with me. Or was it Aunt Susan? At any rate, here it goes...I was born on April 1, 1968 in Fort Knox, Kentucky at Ireland Army Hospital. My Dad was in Vietnam. My Mom was there (heh heh). I believe either on that very day or days before she was driving my Dad's old stick shift car somewhere and got stuck on a hill and the car kept rolling back. It could have been months before. I just know that my Mom can't drive a stick and I can and she always says the only reason is because she was pregnant with me and was stuck on that hill. If only I'd been born sooner! I could've clutched her out of there. Anyway, I digress. The sheets at Ireland Army Hospital were very green, the doctors and nurses were all decked out in green, my Mom's gown was green and the whole place was one big shamrock green building. Hence, my subsequent degree from Michigan State. Mere blocks away was a huge vault of gold (Fort Knox) and a horse racing track. I was destined to be rich and love horses. One out of two is not bad. When my Mom went into labor I was two weeks early. I was not expected to arrive until April 12, which coincidentally, was my Grandpa's birthday. It would have been equally special to share this date with him and quite likely would have excused me from a few minor indiscretions (beer, whiskey, cards, pretty women), but being funny would not have been nearly as, well, funny. I'm told showing up early was not my idea. It was brought on by a series of seemingly repeatable circumstances but in hindsight, not enviable. My mother is a chocolate covered cherry fanatic. They were then, and I believe still are, her favorite. She ate two boxes on March 31. Listen, she was preggers, her husband was on the other side of the world, my sister was running around in diapers, maybe the cable went out, probably it was cold outside, give her a break. Minutes later she wasn't feeling so hot, so my Oma (her mom and in many ways, my beloved second mom) rushed her to the hospital where no less than 12 blood sugar specialists soaped up and put on their surgical masks to consult her about the baby. "Mrs. Fracker, there's a good chance your baby will be born mentally challenged." Fade out. And we're back...it's April 1, about 9:30 p.m. The room is packed with doctors and nurses. Many looks of concern and anxious whispers. My Mom is so matter of fact, I can only imagine her saying, "I will have the baby now" in a thick German accent with her perfectly swooped beehive and then everyone prepping for delivery. Turns out it was a good idea to just get it over with. I popped into the world at 10:00 p.m. weighing in at a cool 6 lbs. 7 oz. or something like that (I still fudge my weight a little, a girl's gotta have some secrets) and a whopping 22" long. Tall for my age then. Not so much now. It's hard to tell at the time if I was mentally challenged. I couldn't hold a pen and Sudoku hadn't come onto the American scene yet. But there's no question I was an April Fool's baby, which my Grandma (Dad's mom) delighted in calling me from that day forward. My Dad found out in code that I'd made it into the world. The overseas call was a bit garbled, but one line came through loud and clear: "Mr. Fracker, your wife Sue Ann had the baby." Since my Mom's name is Helga, this could have been cause for confusion or jail time, but he knew what it meant. They both agreed if I was a girl, I'd be named Sue Ann, for some famous actress at the time whose name looked beautiful on the big screen in the only scripty font available at the time. 10 months later, Pops and I met for the first time in a local restaurant over steaks and fries. Me in my high chair, him in the booth. By way of introductions, I crumpled up my napkin and threw it at him. To this day, that's still how I greet people. I relish being a fool. And I thank my parents for giving me such an auspicious start. Happy Birthday to me...Mom, let me know if I got it right.