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Residents share April Fool’s shenanigans
Kim Johnson - Thu, Mar, 27, 2008
April 1, or April Fool’s Day, is the one day of the year on which lying is encouraged and pranksters’ best attempts are taken in jest.
The origins of April Fool’s Day, sometimes called All Fool’s Day, are uncertain. The most widely accepted theory revolves around the Gregorian calendar reform in the late 1500s.
Prior to France’s switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, New Year’s celebrations began March 25, and continued until April 2. Many people, mostly those who lived in rural areas, refused to accept the change and continued to celebrate the new year on the last official day of the former celebration, April 1.
These people were often referred to as “fools” by their more contemporary counterparts and were made the butt of their jokes. They were called “poisson d’avril,” or “April fish,” because a young, naive fish is easily caught.
The prank-playing continued and eventually spread to other European countries in the 1700s and was introduced to America by the British.
In the 1900s April Fool’s jokes began to be played on a grander scale when media outlets in America and Europe began pranking the public en masse.
The “Swiss Spaghetti Harvest of 1957” is considered to be the most famous media-created April Fool’s joke of all time.
On April 1, 1957, British Broadcasting Company news show “Panorama” reported that due to a particularly mild winter and the extermination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying an unusually large spaghetti crop. The broadcast featured footage of Swiss farmers pulling spaghetti from trees.
Following the broadcast, BBC was inundated with telephone calls from viewers requesting information on how they could grow a spaghetti tree, to which BBC replied, “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”
Europe does not corner the market on April Fools Day pranks. Some Farragut residents shared their own All Fools Day stories.
Farragut Vice Mayor Michael “Mike” Haynes found himself in a strange situation during a job interview with the law firm of Cheek Taylor and Groover.
“When I took my first job as a law clerk, I happened to be interviewing on April 1. Back then they had what they called the Knoxville Bar Association Follies and several of the lawyers dressed as women for the play,” Haynes said.
“[One of the senior partners] came to his office dressed like a woman. He knew my father and he knew I was interviewing and he thought it would be funny to kid me.
“He came over and started talking to me and scared me to death. One of the other partners came out and said ‘Oh, I see you have met Bob,’ and I thought, ‘oh no, what have I gotten myself into to?’
“He finally said, ‘April Fool’s’ but he got me,” he added.
Farragut resident Scott Fugate shared some practical jokes he and his co-workers have played on their boss in recent years.
“There is a Web site called computerpranks.com where you can download programs to make it look as though someone’s computer has crashed or programs that will make the computer do crazy things,” he said.
“Last year we put one of those on his computer and when he tried to click on an icon, it would shoot across the desktop to the other side. He couldn’t open anything. It was great.”
“We let him try to figure out what was going on for a while, but when he started to call someone to fix it, we told him all he needed to do was hit the escape key twice,” Fugate added.
Joey Wilson admitted he was quite the prankster in college.
“Once we trapped our [resident advisor] in his room with pennies,” he said. “All you do is apply a little pressure to the door, then jam a couple of pennies into the door frame and when they try to open the door, there is to much pressure.
“Just make sure you have a screwdriver or something handy to knock the pennies out with once the joke is over,” he added.
Danielle Faulkner likes to play pranks that take a little work to get out of.
“One year I was house-sitting for my sister. I spent the entire week before April Fool’s Day wrapping every single dish, every piece of silverware, basically anything in her kitchen that was not food, in aluminum foil.
“She was so mad she didn’t talk to me for weeks, but we laugh about it now,” she added.
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