Norman introduced me to Loof Lirpa – April Fool spelled backwards. Rather clever,  I thought. Decades ago, one April First, he called an emergency staff meeting, sharing that due to increased competition from rivals, sales were dipping – the office/warehouse (he was in the beer business) might need to close and staff, furloughed. Understandably, staff were flabbergasted: What would they do? How would they meet their financial obligations? Questions came fast and furious… Norman had posted an agenda; the heading: LOOF LIRPA. He suggested that staff look at the agenda and see what they might learn from a careful analysis. After a few quiet minutes, someone shouted : APRIL FOOL! Ah yes! The secret was out…and staff, could and did breathe a gigantic sigh of relief. Years later, every April Fool’s Day, they remembered and ribbed him – even after he’d retired – about Loof Lirpa. I remember in elementary school how much we reveled in playing a joke on classmates …and then we’d convulse in laughter, feeling quite smug that we’d succeeded in besting each other. Our jokes, crazy questions, pranks were never created out of meanness – at least I don’t recall.  Just plain old fashioned fun. I looked up the origin of April Fool’s Day and found an article on History.com: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/april-fools-day. And this: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/holidays/g38986579/april-fools-quotes/ It seems that the news industry, including social media, takes April Fool’s Day quite seriously. There are all sorts of Loof Lirpa cartoons, coupons for fast food, gifs, poems, quotes, recipes, stories, tweets, videos, etc… Gretchen Rubin, prolific author of books on happiness and the very popular podcast: Happier with Gretchen Rubin, shares a story of introducing her older daughter, who was then about 7, to April Fool’s Day…you can read about it here. It’s a delightful story.  I imagine a 7-years’-old-soon-to-be-8 young guy I know might enjoy learning more about Loof Lirpa, this way, too. For me, I don’t have any Loof Lirpa tricks up my sleeve -but Chris, my 7 nearly 8 years old great grand nephew did: He made a bandaid out of toilet paper and pretended that he’d been hurt. Fooled his mother and grandmother and me and aunts, etc… I’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane and learning more about this fun day, especially on a Friday that began with cloudy skies, now blue; the sun’s out; clouds are for the most part puffy, white- tinged with grey and the temp’s on it’s way to a high of 65 degrees. What Loof Lirpa stories come to your mind? Whatever and whenever, do enjoy! Cheers~