Flip of the Calendar

At midnight tonight we can officially flip our calendar over to April. The real first month of Spring. Rain showers will be expected and I plan on jumping in lots of puddles with my red rain boots. Next month is also National Humor Month which is fitting that April Fool's Day is the first day of this month. It is a fun day to get unsuspecting victims and be cautious of people around you for you never know what they are hiding up their sleeve. 

The origin of this wonderful day is from the Roman festival Hilaria, which was held on March 25th and the Medieval Festival of Fools held on December 28th, where pranks are still played in Spanish-speaking countries. 

As for the pranks; one can do the simple rubber band around the sprayer of the kitchen sink to soak a victim or put saran wrap over the toilet bowl to create a peeing barrier or even empty of packet of kool-aid into a shower head so the victim would turn a funny color or at the least get sticky. Other common pranks include fart bombs, telling your boyfriend or family that you are pregnant, and setting multiple alarms around the victims bedroom at different times so they continue to wake up. To me, all of these jokes are funny, but they lack the creativity and the planing of a really good prank. 

Some really well thought out pranks from history include: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest and The Wisconsin State Capitol Collapse. 

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest in 1957 was where Swiss farmers were experiencing a highly successful 'spaghetti crop' where a woman is seen pulling spaghetti off a tree. It aired on a show called Panorama (which was well respected) and hundreds of people phoned int to ask how spaghetti grew on trees, to which they answered "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

Back in 1933 the Madison Capitol-Times proclaimed on the front page that the "Dome Topples Off Statehouse: Officials Say Legislature Generated Too Much Hot Air," which was the Wisconsin State Capitol Collapse prank. The article continues to say that mysterious explosions that were attributed to weeks of fierce debate generated the "large quantities of gas" that spontaneously ignited. To make the story even better, they added a photo of the collapsed building, which is pretty great as Photoshop didn't exist in 1933.

If you are planning on 'getting' someone tomorrow, at the flip of the calendar, whether it be a small prank like the rubber band around the kitchen sprayer or a bigger one such as the Spaghetti Crop, be sure of two things: you get the intended person instead of a bystander (which is still funny) and you don't get caught.