When I was in High school I worked at a store that sold Novelty gifts ( Lava Lamps and music boxes ) , magic props ( Cups and Balls) and Magician's hats and and gags and tricks galore.
That stock was our bread and butter.
Garlic flavored gum, whoopee cushions , dribble glasses, candies that turned your mouth blue ( those actually tasted good so most of us walked around with blue teeth on some days ) we had a walls full and cases of gags for you to choose from.
Of course on April Fools our business went kaboom ( we had exploding pens too ) and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why.
You could SMELL the garlic gum. It was stinky. I mean the garlic gum's scent was so strong it would have knocked Dracula off of his feet. On top of that, the dribble glasses had a weird tilt to them, plus they looked the same- they looked the way they did when my Dad could order them from his comic books and years and years later they still looked the same . People had been pranking each other with the same glass for over 30 years.
However, the glass did come packed in a nice box and the pens were as sturdy as high end fountain pens - which always left me to wonder 'why'.
I figured the gags were obvious because if you went along with the 'surprise' you were a good sport and everyone had a laugh.
It was part of the fun.
So let's speed along through the years and when I am all grown up I started to notice that a little of the fun went out of the April Fools because some people went out of their way to not play pranks, but to humiliate someone for sport.
I worked with a guy whose wife had come from a hard life and when she married my co-worker who went to church every Sunday, volunteered his time to his son's sports teams and school activities and mowed the lawn and took out the trash and did a lot of those things that the Dad's on 1950's sitcoms did, she must have thought he was true blessing.
On the day after April Fools he came into work and I was at my desk doing reports when he said to me, " I really blew it yesterday. "
I thought maybe he had bought one of those gags and nobody fell for it or something.
He should have stuck to the silly pranks.
What he did was that he went home and told his wife he had gotten a promotion and a huge raise and that it looked like things were going to break their way now.
Then he told me she put her hands over her face and started to Thank God for his blessings and then he had to say- he called her an " April Fool "
The depth of his cruelty stunned me - and over the years I knew people who played pranks where someone got a black eye in the end. This was the worst prank story EVER>
He looked really lost. " What do I now? " he asked me.
I think there was a lot more going on with my co-worker then I realized because after his April Fool's joke burned and crashed like a car being driven by a drunk jacked up on various medications against a brick wall, he changed.
The 1950's dad started to come in looking like he was sleeping in his clothes. He stopped talking about his Son, what he and his family did over the weekend. I know it sounds silly, but he used to hold the door open for ladies and he didn't do that anymore.
Maybe his April Fools joke brought out the person he really was. I don't know.
I think that April Fools can be a fun day, but I think it can also be a cruel day- so with that in mind I have left this day for others to indulge in. I just can't get into the Spirit of it all. Maybe that is not such a bad thing.
RDP Monday: JOKER
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