Just a friendly reminder that April 1st is fast approaching, which means we all have to be on guard against falling victim to pranksters determined to pull off the mother of all April Fool’s jokes.
So don’t be surprised on Friday if someone asks if you wouldn’t mind picking up a coin on the ground; only to discover its been glued to the pavement. Make sure also to think twice before kicking the hat lying aimlessly on the ground. It might, after all, have a brick concealed underneath it. And by all means make sure your spouse isn’t filling your morning coffee with a hunk of salt instead of a dash of sugar.
When I was a kid, I remember my sisters had cooked up an April Fool’s joke to play on my Dad when he got back from work. The prank went like this: My sister told my Dad he had a phone message from a woman named`` Myra Maines’’ and he needed to call her back. What my Dad didn’t know was that the phone number was the number of a funeral home and there wasn’t really any Myra Maines. So when my Dad asked to speak with Myra Maines, to the funeral director’s ear it sounded like my Dad was asking ``Is My Remains There’’? After my Dad slammed down the phone, realizing a joke had been pulled on him; he blew his top, storming the house looking for my sister. It was a great memory, a classic April Fool’s prank; but at the time, my Dad didn’t quite find the humor in it until many days later. And of course, it didn’t help my sisters’ case that my Dad had an especially bad day at work; and the last thing he needed was to fall victim to an April Fool’s joke.
Speaking of pranks, I remember when I was a night clerk at The Plain Dealer many many moons ago, we would get bored with not much to do in the wee hours of the morning; so we would rearrange the phone lines on the reporter’s desks, so that the next morning whoever had extension number 4409 would receive calls that belonged to 4810, while the person with extension 4819, would get calls for those belonging 4816, etc etc. I don’t think we pulled this on April Fool’s Day necessarily, but we got a charge out of executing the amateurish prank, which seemed pretty funny to us at the time.
Getting back to April 1st, when exactly did the April Fool’s tradition start?
The day of chicanery, otherwise known as April Fool’s or All Fool’s Day, has such universal appeal, it’s hard to pin down exactly when it all started, but it appears it extends back to 1564, when Charles IX of France adopted the Gregorian calendar, moving the New Year from March 25 to January 1.
Under the Julian calendar, the French visited each other and exchanged gifts (Etrennes) on April 1, the final day of the old calendar's New Year's celebrations.
According to Nancy Cassell McEntire, writing in Western Folklore, `` eventually those conservatives who objected to the change of New Year's Day to January 1 were ridiculed with April 1 visits that mocked the original ceremony of visiting and through the exchange of foolish gifts.’’
In both France and Italy the term April Fish (poisson d'Avril; pesce d'Aprile) refers to a wide range of ritual pranks in which the fish, or fool, is often marked by the sign of a fish. Children in French schools, for example, take great pleasure in fooling their classmates and teachers on April 1st by taping cutouts of fish on the backs of their clothing.
The fish prank is additionally practiced in Holland where children can be found placing a paper herring on the back of an unwitting victim or fool’s clothing; while in Sweden an April Fool’s tradition is to recite the following poem ``April, April, you silly fish, I can fool you as I wish.’’
So the trajectory of the April Fool’s tradition, at least by some accounts, appears to be that it originated with the French, then made its way to Scotland (Gowkie Day) and England; and from there to North America.
A German tradition holds that an important government meeting was scheduled to have taken place in Augsburg on April 1, 1530, but was canceled. Some citizens apparently wagered that the meeting would take place; when it didn’t, they were ridiculed for their foolishness; and before long an April Fool’s tradition was started.
But whichever country, these celebrations usually take place in late March or early April; with Mexico being the exception where All Fool’s Day falls on December 28th.
As the All Fool’s Day tradition became more popular especially with adults, the pranks, as you might imagine, became a little sharper and a bit more innovative.
In 1957, for example, a British television show Panorama introduced viewers to a family of Swiss spaghetti farmers who were harvesting" strands of spaghetti from "spaghetti trees." The BBC was flooded with a storm of calls from viewers, asking how to grow their own crops, only to learn they had been duped into an April Fool’s prank.
The United States, of course, has rolled out its fair share of pranks; the most original coming in an April, 1985 Sports Illustrated feature story about a new phenom, Sidd Finch, who could sling a baseball 186 mph. Finch, unbeknownst to many readers, was merely a piece of fiction created especially for April Fools by journalist and actor George Plimpton.
For those interested in more creative pranks, you might want to check in with the Museum of Hoaxes Web Site which lists the top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time.
Some which caught my eye include:
• On April 1, 1915, during World War I, a French aviator dropped what appeared to be a huge bomb over a battalion of German soldiers, When the bomb never went off; some German soldiers slowly crept near the item, only to discover a large football with a note that read, "April Fool!"
• Well before ``Balloon Boy’’ there was the ``Lung Meister’’ when in 1934 The New York Times published a picture of a German pilot named Erich Kocher, flying through the air powered only by the breath from his lungs. The Times didn’t know the picture was merely a joke, which previously appeared in the April Fool's Day edition of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. A red-faced Hearst's International News Photo agency never realizing the photo was a hoax, distributed it to its U.S. subscribers.
• On March 31, 1940, the Franklin Institute issued a press release, stating that the world would end the next day at 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time; a stunning announcement broadcast by radio station KYW in Philadelphia which quickly became inundated with a flood of panic-stricken callers. The prank was orchestrated by William Castellini, a press agent for the Institute, who was promptly dismissed for his ill-advised hoax.
• In 1962, a broadcaster in Sweden announced to viewers that thanks to a brand new technology, viewers would be able to convert their black and white television sets into color by merely pulling a nylon stocking over their television screens. Although it sounded a little hokey, thousands of viewers were apparently taken in by this April Fool’s joke.
• In 1987 a disc jockey in Los Angeles announced the LA highway would close for repairs for an entire month, beginning on April 8th. Not only did the station hear from an avalanche of angry residents, the station also received a call from a representative from the California Department of Transportation, who voiced his displeasure and lack of amusement over the station’s April Fool’s prank.
• In 1994, PC Computing magazine published an article by John Dvorak in which he described a piece of legislation making its way through the halls of Congress that would make it illegal to use the Internet while intoxicated, or even to discuss sexual matters over a public network. So outraged were voters of this proposed bill that Senator Edward Kennedy had to issue a press release, stating that there was no such bill; and that furthermore he wasn’t the bills’ sponsor.
• In 1966, the Taco Bell Corporation announced they had bought the Liberty Bell and were planning to change the name of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to the Taco Liberty Bell. The outrage from Philadelphia residents, venting their anger to operators at the National Historic Park in Philadelphia finally died down when Taco Bell issued a news release that it had only been a practical joke.
• In 1998, Burger King placed a full-page advertisement in USA Today, announcing the introduction of a ``Left-Handed Whopper’’ in which all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. Thousands of customers fell for the hoax, when they marched into Burger King the next day requesting the new Whopper specifically designed for southpaws.
• In 2000, CNN and the Fox affiliate WNYW were tricked into believing the 15th annual New York City April Fool's Day Parade was scheduled to begin at noon on 59th Street and would proceed down to Fifth Avenue. Camera crews realized they had been fooled when they arrived only to find no signs of a parade. The prank was the brainchild of Joey Skaggs, an infamous prankster, who had been issuing false press releases on April Fool’s every year since 1986.
• In 2002, a supermarket chain in Britain, Tesco, published an advertisement in The Sun, announcing the successful development of a genetically modified 'whistling carrot’. The ad explained when thoroughly cooked, airholes caused the vegetable to whistle.
So be careful this Friday not to fall for any stunts, spoofs, smoke and mirrors, and acts of artful subterfuge; you never know when someone might be yanking your chain.
I have to run; I’ve just been offered a fabulous deal from a real estate agent, who wants to sell me some swampland in Florida.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
March 29, 2011
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