![]() ![]() You know, those little white “firecracker” type things that come in the cute little boxes? I bet you wouldn't think they were so cute after sitting down for an explosive moment at the toilet… As for me, I go all out! □ 10 April Fools Pranks to Play on Your Husband I've included a variety, so if your spouse doesn't handle jokes very well, there are a few mild and tame ideas here as well. Since I originally intended the post to be about jokes you could play on every relationship in your life, I thought I would write a separate article specifically for Aprl Fool's pranks you can play on your husband (or wife). ![]() I learned there are some really funny people in this world! Some of those ideas had me laughing So. I had no idea it would get the response it did, but it was very popular and many people commented and left their own ideas. Because if the victim isn’t laughing, too, then the April Foolishness has not worked.Last year at this time I wrote a post featuring a bunch of ideas for April Fool's Day. The assumption is that the victim will be the perpetuator the next time, or even later in the day. Hundreds called in wanting to know how they could get spaghetti trees of their own, because who wouldn’t want their own fresh spaghetti growing in the garden?Ĭalling the day one of “symbolic inversion” in which power relationships are upended and “commonly held cultural codes, values, and norms” subverted, McEntire argues for a “folk theater” understanding of such pranks. Spaghetti was then a relatively new food in Britain. Mass media has been ripe for April Foolery since mass media became a thing. McEntire acknowledges, “no tool is more effective than the Internet” in suckering fools on April 1st, but the media’s willingness to play along started long before there was any such thing. Among McEntire’s media examples is one from the BBC show Panorama of April 1, 1957, which introduced viewers to a family of Italian spaghetti farmers. Of course, the pranks aren’t just person-to-person. McEntire offers some fine examples of the classic fool’s errand: “the victim is sent for a left-handed screwdriver or wrench, a board-stretcher, a stick with one end, a bucket of striped paint, a bucket of steam, pigeon milk, a jar of elbow grease or a fallopian tube.” Traditionally, an April Fools prank was one in which a “fool” is tricked, or sent on some ridiculously undoable errand, like hunting snipe, snarks, or frog-whiskers. The pranks are lighter in spirit, too, unlike “Hell Night’s” more anonymous and potentially dangerous tricks. It’s somewhat akin to Halloween, but embracing, rather than the darkness of winter, the light of spring. The day becomes one of celebrating the transition between seasons. ![]() Winter is ending, but not quite over yet. The coming of spring itself also seems to be a big part of the tradition of practical jokes and purposeful deception. If the victim isn’t laughing, too, then the April Foolishness has not worked. The calendar change was slow to take hold and there was resistance to it, but those who continued celebrating the new year at the beginning of April, old style, were ultimately shamed as “fools.” With the new Gregorian calendar, the beginning of the year was moved to January. The pre-Gregorian calendar had ended the year near the end of March, coinciding with the beginning of spring. For Europeans, April Fools hearkens back to the transition to the Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century. “Organized festivals and spontaneous personal acts that celebrate the absurd through pranks exist world-wide,” writes folklorist Nancy Cassell McEntire in her examination of the origins and meaning of all this merriment. It’s a folk holiday of pranks and mild humiliations, in which children get to pull one over on their parents or teachers, and vice-versa in which media outlets can make things up, all in good fun. When it comes to our unofficial holidays, April Fools’ Day is one of the weirder ones. ![]()
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