April Fools’ Day, what a funny holiday, isn’t it? When you were a kid, this was probably the best holiday for you. As you got older, did you still find it as fun? From my own experience I have noticed that April Fools’ Day has been declining since I have gotten older.
In elementary school, we would have parties for April Fools’ Day and we would wear funny clothes. Of course, knowing me, I wore a t-shirt, a Looney Tunes tie and jumbo sunglasses. I kind of still dress funny, not going to lie. Anyway I have not celebrated April Fools Day in a very long time nor can I even think about a good, funny April Fools’ joke that I have experienced.
I will say the best April Fools’ Day joke in my opinion is the “Curious Case of Sidd Finch,” by George Plimpton from Sports Illustrated. What this author did was hilarious and quit clever. In his introduction to the article, his caption was “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga.” Before you read on look at that line carefully. Do you notice anything? Well if you look at the first letter in every word it spells “Happy April Fools’ Day.” No one caught on to this for a very long time. Anyway, Plimpton writes about a made up pitcher for the Mets who can throw between 100-200 MPH. People actually believed it and the New York Mets played a long with it. What the Mets did was covered up their bullpen with tarp to not let the media see it and had the Mets catcher come out of the bullpen and pretend his hand was in pain from his pitches. This is one of the best April Fools’ Day jokes a journalist could ever write. Read it for yourself, the link is in this article.
As I said before, as you get older April Fools’ Day isn’t really a thing. Mainly when you hit about high school kids stop pointing out April Fools’ Day and just play pranks on kids everyday. My best prank came when I was a freshman in high school and was by mom on Christmas Day. My mom wrapped a nice descent sized box with just tissue paper in it and a note that said, “I love you.” I flipped out. I threw the box and screamed, “Are you kidding me?” My dad then goes what’s that on the lid. I opened up the envelope attached to the lid and saw that there were two tickets to the 2011 NHL Winter Classic. Honestly, best gift ever and an even better prank by my mom.
This just goes to show how the best pranks do not always happen on April Fools’ Day. For instance, I have to mention that before I wrote this article, I sent my editors a word document pretending it was my article saying simply, “APRIL FOOLS” and that’s it. That right there is the best April Fools joke I have ever played on someone. P.S. They didn’t find it very amusing.
