Last year my family had a hell of a time trying to decide on a weekend to hold our annual reunion, Schreiberfest. Over the course of two weeks, we sent 48 emails to each other, trying to pin down a weekend when seven overbooked families could find the time to meet. Every time it seemed like we had a date, someone would chime in to veto it, and we'd have to start over again.
After we'd finally nailed down the Labor Day holiday as our S-fest weekend, my sister-in-law sent the following message: "I am so sorry. My cousin is getting married I didn't have it on the calendar and we can't go Labor Day. Back to the drawing board."
But she was lying. There was no cousin's wedding that day, no calendar, no drawing board. You see, it was April First, and according to our culture it's okay to lie to those you love on this day. It's supposed to be amusing to make your loved ones look like a "fool."
I've never understood the appeal of April Fool's Day. Often the lie is just lame, like when my co-worker told me last year about a new state law that would tax dog owners by how much their dog weighed. That sounds weird, I thought, and then went about my day. When she revealed that it was all just an April Fool's joke, I thought, oh, okay...whatever.
Lots of websites and news organizations will run some sort of joke news, and that's kinda fun, but they never do it as well as The Onion does it every week, so why get all excited about it?
The same people who are obsessed with fooling their friends and family are also obsessed with not getting fooled. So they go the other way and don't believe anything you say.
You can never repeat anything interesting or remarkable on this day.
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So in response to April Fool's Day, I'm starting a new Timicist holiday. From now on April 5 will be known as April Honest Day. A day for telling the truth, where you can't make up any stupid shit all day long. Where you have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
You'll probably be telling all this truth to your therapist, to get over all the "fun tricks" your friends and family played on you four days earlier.
3 comments:
A whole day of being required to tell the truth reminds me of the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker's God, which translates what people are really thinking. The Babel Fish is said to have caused more wars and bloodshed than anything else in the universe, as a natural result of people knowing other people's actual thoughts.
This holiday isn't really about letting people read your thoughts. Being honest doesn't mean you have to express every thought you have. It's more about not making shit up.
I am not a huge fan of April Fools Day. Today on WBEZ they said the CTA was down due to some sort of power outage. I thought oh my that is no good. Then April Fools. sigh. At least it is opening day for the Cubs. Which hopefully is not a joke unto itself this year.
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