Every Party Needs a Pooper

I loathe April Fools’ Day.  There, I said it.  Why do we mark a day to embarrass our loved ones and/or complete strangers?  You can google for yourself how worldwide and historical the practice is.  But the wiki doesn’t delve into the Why.  Perhaps it began, like Boxing Day, as a day to turn the tables, let the Staff have a bit o’ fun to make up for the other 364.  But those days are long past and April Fools’ Day has become quite ecumenical, with anyone eligible to be targeted.  It’s mean.  The jokes are seldom funny except in that bullying “Haha, so glad that’s not me” kind of way, which isn’t funny at all.  Maybe my sense of humor is broken, but I find the Fates and the world cruel enough that to mislead or embarrass someone intentionally with the sole purpose of being able to shout, essentially, “Got you!” is pointless and sadistic.

It is with the greatest relief that April 1st will find me hermitically sealed upon the grounds of La Fortezza della Solitudine.  But were I not, I might put greater thought into countering the culture for the day.  Of course, I am counter culture here every day in 99 ways more than I know.  But perhaps I would bake cookies and leave them anonymously on my neighbors’ porch, with an April Foods’ Day note.  Or carry apples and oranges to hand to strangers.  Or perform guerrilla car washing.  Maybe weed a public garden.  Or just do something nice for instead of nasty to a friend.  The point is, I’d very much like to see this glorification of pulling one over on the unsuspecting, frankly an easy target, be forgotten.  Life always has a left-hook to the jaw in its back pocket, why add any suffering at all to the world, particularly when the Fool just might be catching that blind-side left hook later in the day already?

April in Paris

The 1st of Green in Paris