Getting Silly

Whether you or I prank anyone on this day makes no difference. This is the day for it. Why would anyone think that we need a day to be set aside whereby it was perfectly “legal” to play multiple tricks on people? Maybe they thought that after a long dreary winter, we needed a day to just get silly. Sounds good to me. I love a good prank as much as the next guy. I can’t say that I have always been good at pranking, and I can’t say some pranks haven’t blown up in my face…apparently not everyone likes to be pranked. Go figure!! I think for me is stems from my childhood years when my sisters and I tried to pull every April Fools’ Day joke we could think of on friends or family who happened to cross our paths.

While many possible origins for the national prank day exist, no one truly seems to know where or when it started. Maybe the origins story is a joke in its own right. It could be that whenever and wherever it got started, the initiator decided to say that the tradition started somewhere else so that they could say that they were just following the tradition they had heard about. That idea isn’t so farfetched, now, is it? Somebody, somewhere had to get this started. Still, maybe for those who don’t like being pranked, the originator didn’t want to take the blame. That makes sense to me too. If you have ever been “that guy” who pranked someone with no sense of humor, you know that you would gladly blame someone else…anyone else for making you do such a thing.

I’m just thankful that it was a tradition in our family…from our parents, Al and Collene Spencer, all the way down to my sisters, Cheryl Masterson, Caryl Reed, Alena Stevens, and Allyn Hadlock…and then on to the generations beyond. People really should be taught at a young age to take a joke, and even to laugh at ourselves when we’ve been had. It’s a well-known fact, even from the Bible…Proverbs 17:22, “Laughter is like taking good medicine.” It is true, and even medicine has agreed that laughter is good for you. Laughter reduces stress, strengthens the immune system, boosts mood, and diminishes pain…just to name a few good things about laughter. So, for all you people who have no sense of humor…lighten up and laugh a little. You know you want to!! Happy April Fools’ Day everyone!!