April Fools’ Day goes back fairly long ago in history. It’s speculated that it originated in the 1580s in France when they switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Those who didn’t “get the memo” 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 pranks 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.
I am an admitted gullible person.
I just was not exposed to jokes or pranks and if you grew up in a house like mine you did not participate in April Fool’s Day. My mom was an educator and I guess her “classroom rules” permeated our everyday world and pranks were not allowed. I remember one morning, my 6-year-old self thought it would be funny to scare my mom. I hid around a corner and when she came down the hallway I jumped out and yelled “Boo!” I was so excited but she was less than thrilled and that was some of the most trouble I ever found myself in!!
To this day, I do not scare people nor try to prank, which is odd because I LOVE to have fun and play and give people a hard time.
There was one time I attempted to prank someone and it went monumentally wrong! I mean, epic failure! My brother-in-law was around 13 years old and staying with us for the weekend. I thought it would be hysterical to pull a prank on
I worked really hard to get that tape pressed down so you couldn’t see it and tried to come up with every excuse under the sun to get Mike to the sink. It did not happen. Sadly it took so long and so much time passed that I had forgotten all about it. I was cooking dinner and needed to use the sink. Long story short, I pranked myself. I flipped up the handle and BOOM! Water sprayed all over me! I could not get to the faucet quick enough to turn off the water and got soaked! Subsequently, I was seriously pissed that I was the one that got sprayed and not my brother-in-law. He, on the other hand, got to sit back and laugh his little rear-end off because I pranked myself! He laughed at me so hard that day. Luckily, I was also able to laugh at myself after getting over the humiliation of a prank gone wrong.
Do you live in a prankster house?
I still don’t and I’m terrified that my son is going to learn all kinds of tricks and I’m going to be the butt of many a joke. I just hope he doesn’t video me and my humiliation can remain private, between me, my husband and my “oh, so, NOT funny” son. This right here is something I envision happening…
Have you ever been the butt of an epic April Fools’ Joke? Or, do you have an April Fools’ Day fail? Share your story with us in the comments.
