You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 1st, 2008.
I think the best April Fool’s trick we pulled as kids was when we rubber-banded the sprayer in the kitchen sink closed so mom got hosed when she tried to rinse our breakfast dishes.
I really appreciate April Fool’s pranks. Missing doors from bathroom stalls, wildly rearranged furniture, desk accessories glued in place: all of this I find endlessly entertaining.
It’s the plays on reality that get me. Like when I logged into my gmail this morning: I was all guns a blazin’ to write a post blasting the new time stamp campaign.
Says gmail: “Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn’t slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.” Cheaters! I was ready to cry. No fair!
And then it occurred to me: it was a joke. Google has one every year. I’m just a little slow like that. (More details from those clever, clever Google guys and gals here: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html)
Our boss had a bit of fun with me, too, when he sent the specs for our issue, which I was putting together today. He designated the lead report to be “the write-up on the increasing online prevalence of pet-on-pet pornography.” I was thoroughly confused, and frantically searched our folders for nearly half an hour looking for that file. I was really ready to walk over to his office, apologize for my ineptitude, and admit that I just couldn’t find that piece anywhere when I caught myself. “Wait a minute,” I said. “We don’t write about pet porn!” Ha Ha. Very funny, stupid boss.
I don’t know what it is about me that so persistently takes the world at face value. I do, though, and I always have. You’d think I would have overcome this, seeing as both my parents are serious jokers. One year, my dad had us going that my grandma, his mom, was pregnant with twins. I was totally excited to have aunts and uncles who were younger than me; it seemed such a novelty. When I was an exchange student my junior year of high school, my mom sent me a terrible e-mail informing me that my English teacher from home, a very harsh and not tremendously friendly nun, was insisting that I take her mid-term, even though I hadn’t been there all semester. “I’ll mail it to you,” Mom wrote, adding “sorry about this.” Not real. Not at all.
Notwithstanding this upbringing, still I have countless stories of ways I’ve been duped, outlandish tales that I’ve swallowed hook, line and sinker for no other reason than that the teller seemed so serious, and I’m just so willing to believe.
Though it will certainly wear off, for the rest of today, at least, consider my guard up. Time-altering e-mail and pet porn, sheesh.
