Happy April Fool’s Day 2019

Last year on this date a friend sent a text message to his very, very devout Christian wife stating he was going to join her church. A few seconds after she and others of her congregation had flooded his phone with message of congratulations and encouragement he sent out "April Fool!"

Yes, they remain married to this day.

agent j

An incident like this was staged in my hometown sometime around the late 1960's. Someone placed a mannequin covered with automatic transmission fluid in a dark corner of an alley behind the J.C. Penney store. In a small town of about 15,000 a murder would have been quite an event, so every emergency vehicle in town rolled to the scene with lights blazing and sirens blaring. The police chief afterwards commented that someone could have been hurt with all the commotion, which is the standard line when they are caught with egg on their faces.

I had always heard that the unwritten rule for April Fool pranks was ”Do no harm, either physically or mentally.” These seem to have broken that rule.

These pranks remind me of some of the extreme Halloween decorations that get people upset every year, like hanging life-sized witch dummies from tree branches, or displaying an imitation of the nanny's death scene from "The Omen".