I have always loved April Fools’ Day. I’m a practical joker by heart, so it’s a “holiday” that’s perfectly up my alley.
Over the years, I’ve pulled some killer pranks. Like the time I created a fake note from Rusty’s first-grade teacher announcing that he’d been expelled from class. His mom was LIVID and started yelling at him. Rusty was in on the whole thing and played the role of disaffected six-year-old perfectly. Still surprised my ex fell for that given the fact that this alleged note was written in purple crayon! Then there was the time I switched everybody’s office and cubicle name plates at work. The VP of Sales became a Customer Service Representative, the Human Resources Director was demoted to Custodian, etc. Best of all was the time I called a former coworker who had been hired F/T after starting out as a temp. I announced on Facebook one year that Tara and I were calling it quits because things just weren’t working out. Guess I’ve always had a bit of a perversely evil streak come April 1! People don’t always respond well to being suckered. But that’s what makes it so fun!
One thing I had never done, however, was write an April Fools’ blog post.
Until yesterday, that is.
Which is my way of telling you no, I did not get suspended from work for surfing for porn! Inadvertently or otherwise. Some people were onto me from the start, but others fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I’m sorry if you were one of the gullible ones, but know that even though I may have been laughing my ass off, I appreciate your concern! I hope you’re a good sport about it and we can still be friends despite my little white lie. 😊
And if you follow me on Instagram, no…we did NOT find an armadillo in the backyard and adopt it as a pet! They are definitely not native to these parts.
My coworkers were a little confused about the change to the white board in our lobby when they arrived yesterday morning. I’d simply taken the liberty to replace the real tenets (“Less is more,” “It’s about them, not us”) with updated ones that Navin R. Johnson would appreciate.
Damn. I was on fire Thursday. Maybe Brion was right, ha.
In all fairness, I’m not the only one who was busy pranking people yesterday. Some of my favorite companies got in on the act, like Jerry’s Cakes and Donuts.
And Culver’s.
And Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels.
Half the world is up in arms about Volkswagen’s fake press release about rebranding as Voltswagen, but I thought the whole thing was hilarious. People need to chill out. I also didn’t buy it for one second, even though the announcement came a day early in order to really throw people off. I think when you’re a natural-born practical joker, your guard is automatically up against that sort of thing because you kind of assume everybody else is trying to prank you!
My favorite April Fools’ joke of all time occurred in 1957, when the BBC television show Panorama aired a segment that showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from a grove of trees. It included footage of women collecting strands of spaghetti and placing them in wicker baskets before laying them out in the sun to dry.
The narrator, respected anchorman Richard Dimbleby, explained that the 1957 harvest was expected to be particularly bountiful given the near-eradication of the destructive spaghetti weevil pest, and that March was always a touch-and-go month for spaghetti farmers due to the possibility of a late frost that might impair the flavor of the pasta. When hundreds of viewers jammed the BBC’s phone lines to inquire where they could find a spaghetti tree of their own, the BBC’s official response was, “Place a spring of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”
That’s just genius.
Mark My Words 
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