Sunday, April 01, 2007

Today Is Not April Fool's Day

Gotcha! It totally is April Fool's Day. Man, you should have seen the look on your face! Quick, turn off your monitor and try to make out your expression in the dim reflection. Fuck, nevermind - the moment passed. If you do it now, you'll just look like a squinting dumbshit in dire need of a handheld mirror. But that dark screen does make you look more tan. So it's up to you - look or don't. I'll wait.

April Fool's Day is a seriously goofy holiday. It's the one day when you're given carte blanche to use someone else's trust in you for frivolous evil. The idea, as far as I can tell, is that you spend the rest of the year cultivating relationships and establishing a mutual trust, and on April Fool's Day you take that emotional capital and blow the entire wad on a giant, douche-til-you-drop douching spree against those to whom you mean the most. That's the evil genius of the day. It's designed to make someone look foolish, but it only works when the prankster is a person so close to the prankee that callous acts of assholery should really be out of the question. If all your best friends are the types of people who draw on you or hit you in the nuts when you fall asleep, then they're not in a very good position to take advantage of April Fool's Day. But the friend who sees you sleeping and sees fit to put a blanket on you and defend you from would-be testicle vandals - that friend is well-equipped to fucking rock your world for 10-to-15 seconds before the inevitable snort seeps out and explodes into an avalanche of loved-one-mocking laughter. The one perceived as least likely to participate is the one who can pull the legendary prank. That's why I never take calls from my grandparents on April 1st. All of April, actually. You just can't be too careful.

But if we're being realistic, for every legendary prank that is passed down from generation to generation and immortalized in song (who hasn't heard "'Twas Ellersbury Who Trick'd Ye" around a campfire?) , there are a million poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly remembered desperate grasps at hilarity. The fact that April Fool's Day is universally known to even the most gullible would-be patsy obviously limits a prankster's options. If it were "April: Fool's Month", it'd be way easier. So most people who can operate within the stringent timeframe to pull off something awesome are so trustworthy that they would never even dream of abusing their power. It just isn't very likely that your priest is going to show up at your door saying the apocalypse is nigh, only to start laughing and reveal that it was Sister Josephine, not Jesus, who set all your bushes on fire. Although I guess I can think of a few cases of priest untrustworthiness, so that might have been a poor example.

What are we left with, then? Mostly, we're left with uncreative, untrustworthy assholes who lack the requisite cache to pull off anything cool. The most they're getting away with is tapping you on the shoulder and shouting "APRIL FOOL'S, DUDE!" when you look the wrong way. So either they are self-aware enough to know this (in which case any prank that they successfully pull off is so mundane that it's akin to the St. Patrick's Day "no-green pinch", and therefore is lame), or they plan something so farfetched and ridiculous that it ends up being debatable that "April Fool's Day" isn't actually referring to them. What you end up with is a potentially awesome day that almost never delivers, and in fact is often more irritating than any average day. Like when you turn 50, and every individual gift-giver thinks their gag-gift will be hilarious and a nice change of pace, but in the end you get a bunch of lame cards, 20 enemas, and a few Viagra flyers, but no real gifts.

But enough about April Fool's Day. APRIL FOOL'S! I'm not done yet! Gotcha again! No, I am done. Gotcha again, again. Sorry. Just kidding. Nevermind. Shit.