It was April Fool’s Day on 1 April, when pranksters, jokesters and previously good friends play tricks upon one another.
Like a number of these traditions, no one is exactly sure how it all began. Usually there’s a quote found in a book from centuries ago in olde tyme English that barely makes any sense – “Ye fooles on eve of Springth tiden” – or some such, that might suggest tenuous beginnings. No doubt, back then, if a jape against the king went wrong, yon jesters might find themselves drawn and quartered in the town square. My, how we laughed.
And yet, the day has endured.
The Cayman Compass many years ago was not averse to getting in on the fun. Each year, there would be some preposterous story or other … I seem to remember the idea of building a bridge between two of the Cayman Islands being floated about. Despite it being a crackers notion, we still got calls and letters wondering who had come up with such a hare-brained scheme? Actually, looking at the world news these days, truth is becoming stranger than fiction anyway. The line has significantly greyed.
In researching the topic of April Fool’s, I found some marvellous examples of other well-known organisations who liked a bit of a joke.
In 1957, the BBC programme ‘Panorama’ showed Swiss farmers picking spaghetti from spaghetti trees. The much-lauded (and therefore much respected) broadcasting corporation received so many enquiries from viewers asking where they could buy a spaghetti plant that the BBC had to fess up to it pretty sharpish afterwards. Would meatball bushes have been a step too far? Probably.
In 2008, the BBC once again tested its viewers’ senses of humour, reporting that during filming for its natural history series ‘Miracles of Evolution’, it had captured footage of flying penguins.
According to historic-uk.com, “Presenter Terry Jones of Monty Python fame was shown walking with the penguins in Antarctica, and then following their flight to the Amazon rainforest where the penguins would ‘spend the winter basking in the tropical sun’. The video went viral on the internet.”
Another fabulous example of really going to town with the April Fool’s concept was when The Guardian newspaper, in 1977, printed an impressive seven-page supplement about an island that didn’t exist: San Serriffe. Remember that back then, people couldn’t just jump on the internet and quickly discover it was a load of old hooey. Reactions ranged from those who wanted to visit this magical place as a tourist, to those who got the gag and wrote letters to the newspaper waxing lyrical about their amazing trip there and how they couldn’t wait to return.
In modern times, you get the likes of Jimmy Kimmel playing elaborate tricks on family members or friends (although he does not appear to restrict himself to one day a year). He has a nice healthy budget to work with, so putting a car on the roof of a building or filling a house with gummy bears are capers within his reach. The rest of us are more limited with what we can do, although with some creativity, our pranks can be just as effective as expensive ones.
All of that being said, I have learned over time that you have to be very careful who you choose to be your patsy, mark, victim … whatever you want to call them. Some people are NOT fans of practical jokes, and others love them. It’s always good to get a handle on their joke-o-meter before things backfire.
Here’s a very small example: I discovered early on that a friend of mine was not to be trifled with in any way. And there was no April Fool’s pass. One day, when she was away from her desk, I switched her mouse buttons through the app, so they functioned as they would for a left-handed person. I went back to my cubicle, muffling my giggles, waiting for her to return and start working again. Within two minutes of her taking her seat, she got so exponentially frustrated and annoyed, trying to figure out why her pointing device had suddenly gone haywire, that not only did I not want to jump out yelling “April Fool’s!”; I instead wanted to find the nearest exit and skedaddle.
I’ve got a pretty good sense of humour, but I’ve had my share of not finding a trick hilarious. Decades ago, an acquaintance of mine had come back from a trip to the US, and he brought me some scratch-off lottery cards. I went through them as usual, nothing, nothing, $5, nothing … and then halfway through, I got a card that said I’d won $100,000. This was when I was driving around a car with a broken water pump, so I had a gallon bottle of H2O with me wherever I went, praying I wouldn’t get stuck in traffic until my next pay cheque came in.
I couldn’t breathe. I checked it and checked it. Everything matched. It was a winner!
Even then, as visions of sugar plums and new automotive water pumps danced in my head, there was something that wouldn’t allow me to buy rounds of drinks for everyone at the bar, followed by offering to buy the bar itself. Maybe it was simply the disbelief that accompanies a genuine win, or maybe it was my spidey senses tingling. Whatever it was, before I made a complete ass of myself, I turned the card over to read the fine print.
From a distance, it looked like any other scratch card and perfectly legit. Up close, it said that in order to claim my prize, I had to contact “Yo Mama”.
Ah.
The guy burst out laughing, and I chortled hollowly along with him, not unlike Joe Pesci in ‘Goodfellas’. Yeah … good one. For someone who didn’t know me very well, he was taking a heck of a chance that I would take such a thing in stride, or even find it amusing. P.S. I didn’t.
I now don’t recall his name or what he looked like. Gee, what a surprise.
I own an entertainment company, which involves booking lots of local performers and vendors for corporate groups visiting the island. In busy season, it can get pretty hectic, particularly if the weather is iffy. I can’t count the number of times over the years that a musician or entertainer has thought it downright hilarious to message me on the morning of 1 April to tell me that they can’t work that night because they’re sick, or they double-booked themselves, or they’ve had to fly to Guam. When I get these messages, I don’t think, “Oh, ha-ha – April Fool’s on me!”, because the date is the last thing going through my head. My first thought is to reach for the defibrillator as I try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do to get their gig covered. Then, just as I consider flying one way to Guam myself, the inevitable “Got ya!” comes pinging in on my phone.
All I’ll say is that none of them, individually, has dared to do it to me twice.
Yes, you need to be most careful when you decide to play a joke on someone. Different outcomes are possible. On the one hand, they might slap their thighs and laugh till they cry. On the other hand, you may find chopsticks rammed into all four of your car tyres the next morning.
LOL. April Fool’s!
