Fools Rush In

"There's a spider crawling up your shirt."

"Auuuugh!!!"

"April Fools!"

Ha ha ha.

I've never been particularly fond of April Fools' Day. Some folks really get into it, but to me, it's just another form of schadenfreude – defined in the dictionary as getting your rocks off at someone else's expense. (I may have paraphrased.)

I just don't care for pranks like spraying glitter across someone's desktop. Putting salt in their coffee instead of sugar (which should be a punishable offense, in my book). Or covering the toilet seat with plastic wrap. In other words, acts that would just be mean any other day besides April 1st.

I guess I don't have a problem with the pranks that are obviously fake. BK's left-handed Whopper. The BBC's story about harvesting spaghetti in a Swiss village. A Swedish television station's assertion that you could change your TV's black and white reception into color simply by placing a nylon stocking over the screen.

And there have been some clever efforts that were so cheeky, one can't help but laugh. For example, it was pretty amusing that the Texas House of Representatives was hornswoggled. Two reps who wanted to prove no one reads anymore (this was in 1971, mind you) introduced a bill honoring serial killer Albert DeSalvo ("the Boston Strangler") for his "noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology." The bill passed unanimously.

So, rather than celebrate April Fools' Day by tormenting Mr. Ginley or the cat, I decided to troll the Google and see what other pranks had been pulled in years past so I could amuse myself (and you, dear reader) on this (for now) sunny April Fools' morning. Here goes.

The earliest known prank occurred in 1698. The Dawks' News-Letter reported that several people were sent to the Tower of London Ditch (aka "moat") for the washing of the lions. Of course, there were no lions and they weren't getting a bath. But the hilarity that ensued made the prank something of a tradition in the city, and it was repeated on gullible citizens ever after. In the mid 1800s, some prankster even printed up tickets to the annual lion-washing event.

Type geeks like me will love this one. In 1977, The Guardian, a British Rag (those Brits do love their April Fools), produced a 7-page report about "San Serriffe." It was reputed to be a small republic in the Indian Ocean comprised of islands that were shaped like semi-colons. It mentioned collective bargaining agreements led by the President's second cousin, Antonio "Che" Pica. The island was described as having two main islands, Upper Caisse (whose capital was Bodoni) and Lower Caisse, home of the kwote, the national bird. (If you're interested, you can read the whole story here.)  

In 1997, 46 comic strip artists got together and decided to create each others' strips for the day. It was dubbed the Great Comic Strip Switcheroonie. Garfield stole Dagwood's sandwich, Nancy appeared as Darth Vader in Fox Trot and For Better or For Worse got the cartoon balloons from Mother Goose & Grimm. There have been other times when characters strayed from one comic strip to another, but this was the largest scale effort. 

Well, I guess I've spent enough time on all this nonsense. Mr. Ginley just walked in and said, "Tell them you're the luckiest woman in the universe and you're lucky to have me."

April Fools!