April Fool's Day is not a day I celebrate. I have never really liked it.
Being named April made it worse growing up.
Kids can be mean and this day was an excuse to get away without getting into trouble.
I avoided the day when possible. Happy that it landed on a weekend sometimes. Other years I felt "sick" and couldn't go to school, but I had to anyway because my mom knew I was fine.
So I just kept my head low and pretended it was any other day. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't.
I don't like tricks or pranks to be played on me and so I don't do them to others.
(Do unto others as you would have them do unto you)
One year I was staying at grandmas when a young cousin decided to play some tricks.
I was up first that morning and went to make coffee.
I turned on the water and got soaked by the sprayer.
Still very sleepy, I wasn't sure why the water was coming at me instead of going in the coffee pot.
She had put a rubber band on the spray nozzle so when the water was turned on it would spray the victim right away. I was the victim of that prank and a bit cautious for the rest of the day because I wasn't sure what else she did.
I know that is no big deal, I got a little wet right before my shower and it helped wake me up.
But I told that story to my son...
Now it is relived every year.
But, I usually catch it - if I remember what day it is before coffee.
Here is a link that I found that explains a little about the popular day and possibly how it all got started.
On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.
Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery. Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.
Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.
April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.
In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled. In 1985, Sports Illustratedtricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
Some People really like this day and enjoy out-doing the pranks they did the year before. Good for them. I am happy it makes them happy!
Just don't involve me :P
~FriggleFraggle~
