April Fools Day has never triumphed over me in the way that it did yesterday when my employee, good friend and roommate Adam Chaney masterfully pulled off an April Fools prank on me. He involved my GM, our Corporate Office, a sheriff, and a very detailed tale about a felony that he was hiding on his record from me. He looked me sincerely in the eyes with authenticity as I had to terminate his employment, hear about the weekends he was secretly spending in the regional jail, and about his upcoming court dates and inevitable imprisonment. After about ten minutes of spinning his web — as I promised him with tears in my eyes to visit him in jail — he shouted April Fools. I burst into tears. Tears of anger, tears of sadness, tears of relief, tears of joy and tears of restoration. It was as if I had lost a friend and they were brought back to life in front of my eyes.
The roller coaster of emotions that Chaney put me through yesterday made me appreciative of the spectrum of emotions that we as humans are capable of. It’s not often that you get to run the entire gamete of emotion, but when you do, boy is it enlightening. Moreover, I realized how cathartic it feels to care. We too often take people for granted, but today I am not taking Chaney for granted. His ego will grow as I write this, but we all need to remember how much we care about our friends, family and co-workers on a daily basis, because it’s not often that we get to get them back after we think we have lost them.
Make sure you tell everyone you love — friends, lovers, pets, children, parents, bosses, mentors — that you love them. You never know how and when life will throw that unexpected curve ball at you, so live you life in such a way that they know how much you really care.