My sister will be 40 in the summer, but her dirty tricks could be those committed by a child. She has already smeared my car handles with butter, replaced my mother’s candles with hot-dog sausages (!) and often changed the wallpaper of her colleagues for old photos of Roch Voisine…
“The less nasty, the better”, in his opinion.
Let’s say she walked! As a teenager, Annie-Claude did not turn her nose up at bad shots with real consequences. Among them: the placing of ketchup sachets folded in half under the lid of certain toilet seats… Fortunately, over time, she has developed an expertise in absurd tricks. His stagings have now made him famous both within our family and among his patients.
My big sister is a health and social services assistant. Every day she visits people who need care. And like many of her colleagues, Annie-Claude gets involved. She does not just treat, she accompanies, listens and shares. She likes.
Some patients love his bad shots. Isolated at home, they are entertained by these comic windows that suddenly open to other lives.
My sister had quite a bit of success telling one of these pandemic tricks, for example…
1er April 2020, she woke up her son at dawn, in a panic. “The grocery store has launched an appeal to the population! They absolutely need employees this morning. We gave your name. Quick, get up, you start in 15 minutes! My nephew, then a 13-year-old teenager who had never worked in his holy life, slipped into the shower and dressed clean, ready to honor his civic duty. (He just went back to bed, eventually.)
At a time when everyday life couldn’t be more bleak, this scenario had been able to cheer up the sick people who stood in the way of my sister, essential worker and creative mother.
Last year, she instead hid in her bathroom, cell phone in hand, to call the landline of her own house. Repeat. Every time her boyfriend answered, she hung up. She would wait for him to move away into another room, then start again. The more he said, the more she jubilant.
According to Annie-Claude, a successful April Fool’s Day, “it’s an innocent move that creates a real surprise and stays with you all day! You have to think about it with a laugh.
That day, she thought about it again, anyway… She even proudly told the thing to one of her patients. And the anecdote turned into training.
The woman in her sixties lives with motor disorders. She spends the day at home, while her husband works. During this time, my sister comes to offer her care and, in all her tenderness, attention. She was therefore telling her innocent misdeeds to her patient when the latter told her an astonishing confidence: she had never played tricks.
” Never ?
– Never ! »
Annie-Claude got carried away: “You absolutely have to play a trick on your husband, first! »
The lady immediately began to giggle, like a young girl both embarrassed and excited by the transgression.
After some thought, she suggested that we hide her man’s underwear. It’s unmissable: the first thing he does when he comes back from work is put on his pajamas. If his panties weren’t there, he would look for them, that’s for sure!
It was a good start, but my sister thought it lacked a bit of direction. If his boxers weren’t in their usual place, he’d just take another pair, right? Playing tricks can be learned. The patient had potential, she only needed a guide to perfect her execution…
Under the able supervision of my sister, the underwear ended up hanging on the lifter near the bed. Up high, like a flag! Obviously, the man quickly saw them on his way home, but the innocence and the element of surprise were there. Successful shot, then.
More importantly, that brief moment of humanity had made a patient happy.
“She couldn’t stop laughing,” recalls my sister. She wondered how her husband was going to react… I was just glad they were having a laugh together. It’s not always easy, what they go through. »
I remember this 1er April 2022. That evening, my sister told me everything – from her hiding place in the bathroom to the bit of light offered in a necessary care routine – and I had been moved by such purity. His tricks were both perfectly banal and genuinely interesting. I had promised myself to do a chronicle of it.
Because you see, I think I have a lot to learn from my eldest. Maybe you too, by the way…
For me the 1er April is not particularly synonymous with celebration. I’m not a prankster, but when I listen to Annie-Claude talk about her big plans and see her lead isolated people into her beautiful madness, I tell myself that we might all benefit from maintaining more innocence.
Can’t keeping the game alive help ease the weight off our shoulders? What if the good mood was, in part, through hot dog sausages slipped into candlesticks? (No, I will never go back.)
“Start playing tricks tomorrow morning,” my sister recently warned me. You will laugh so much! »
I believe the advice is worth spreading.
Especially since we only have one week left to find the perfect silly scenario…