When P.T. Barnum said there’s a fool born every minute, he underestimated. Although the staggering numbers continue to grow, only one special day recognizes those being duped and those doing the duping. Mark Twain observed that All Fools’ Day — or April Fools’ Day — was to remind us of what we are on the other 364 days. Being foolish is a universal trait.
Historians cannot be certain where celebrating the foolish began — perhaps with early Romans or Hindus or Jews. In 1582, many thousands were befuddled when Pope Gregory deleted 10 days from the calendar to correct previous computation errors in the time for Earth to circle the sun. Having no TV anchors to explain the data about the updating of dates left the illiterati wondering what day it was for years.
Countries all over the world trick their unwary — usually in the spring, because that’s when the sap rises. The French tickle their funny bones on Poisson d’Avril (April Fish) by attaching the picture of a fish to a victim’s derriere. Scotsmen wrote “Kick me” before posting the paper on the posterior.
Most human beings don’t need help making fools of themselves; it’s a do-it-yourself-job, including those who play lotteries. In Colorado in 2006, some 454 million chances were sold, but only nine gamblers hit the big numbers and won more than $1 million. Their chances were worse than 1 in 50 million.
Some pessimists call love a fool’s paradise, saying that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Nationally, some 2.3 million marriages occur annually between couples gambling on finding lifelong happiness with their soul mates despite the statistics: half of all marriages end in divorce.
TV’s old “Candid Camera” and the current “Just for Laughs” let millions of viewers witness the fooling of unwary participants weekly. Tabloids at checkout counters dupe their readers daily with stories about Martians who dwell among us, the discovery of giant skeletons, aliens who kidnap earthlings, thirsty vampires, the man who fathered several hundred children.
Many media members have used April Fools’ Day for their hoaxes, including reports on:
• The sale of America’s Liberty Bell to a Mexican fast food chain which would rename it “The Taco Bell.”
• The invention of left-handed burgers for southpaws.
• The hybridizing of carrots with a hole on top that would whistle when the vegetable was fully cooked.
• The necessity of not running faster than 6 miles an hour in city parks to avoid disturbing mating squirrels.
• A method of ridding phone lines of contamination, which involved putting phones in a plastic bag to catch dust bunnies.
• A warning about a mile-wide invasion of wasps, advising listeners to wear their socks over their trouser legs to avoid painful personal invasion.
• The breeding of a new 4-inch pet, the Tasmanian mock walrus, which purred, had a gentle disposition, never had to be groomed, was easily housebroken and ridded households of cockroaches and other pests.
• The temporary juxtapositioning of two planets at 9:54 p.m., resulting in a loss of gravity, allowing a feeling of weightlessness and giving everybody an ability jump higher.
A lot of fools bit. Some were angry.
Centuries ago, risk-happy sailors crossed oceans, dependent on the stars, gambling on finding new lands. America was settled by “fools” willing to risk meager existences for the uncertainty of what lay ahead. They were gamblers all: the pilgrims, the pioneers, the goldseekers, the railroad builders, the homesteaders. Now, space travelers, sheathed in metal machines, may be the biggest fools of all — shot out of Earth’s orbit on a million-mile journey with no guarantee of a return trip.
On the other hand, perhaps these travelers are not fools but wise men, blazing the way to new futures, knowing that the line between wisdom and folly is often invisible.
Louise Bohmer Turnbull is a Denver native and retired teacher who has written commercial film scripts and an animated television special.
