A Look At April Fool's Day

When we were kids, we LOVED April 1st. Spent days or weeks coming up with the one prank that would shock, stun, piss off,  or have a reaction of total hilarity.  Sometimes they were not funny.  The guy who jumped off a bridge to scare his girlfriend and realized he miscalculated the length of his bungie cord.  Oops.  It goes back to the old saying of what a Redneck (excuse me, NASCAR American) says before he dies is....."Hey, Hold my beer and watch this"...

Anyway, straight from Wikipedia is a paragraph or two on the origins of April Fools Day...just in case you were wondering. 

The custom of setting aside a day for the playing of harmless pranks upon one's neighbor is recognized everywhere.^{[1][dubious – discuss]} Some precursors of April Fools' Day include the Roman festival of Hilaria.

Bertha R. McDonald, in Harper's Weekly explicated an origin of April Fools' Day, stating that some "authorities gravely back with it to the time of Noah and the ark, and the London Public Advertiser of March 13, 1769, prints the following paragraph concerning this theory: 'The mistake of Noah sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated, on the first day of April, and to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance it was thought proper, whoever forgot so remarkable a circumstance, to punish them by sending them upon some sleeveless errand similar to that ineffectual message upon which the bird was sent by the patriarch'."^[2]

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392), the "Nun's Priest's Tale" is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two.^[3] Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon.^[4] Thus the passage originally meant 32 days after March, i.e. 2 May,^[5] the anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. Readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean "32 March", i.e. April 1.^{[citation needed][6]} In Chaucer's tale, the vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox.

In 1508, French poet Eloy d'Amerval referred to a poisson d’avril (April fool, literally "Fish of April"), a possible reference to the holiday.^[7] In 1539, Flemish poet Eduard de Dene wrote of a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on April 1.^[5] In 1686, John Aubrey referred to the holiday as "Fooles holy day", the first British reference.^[5] On April 1, 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to "see the Lions washed".^[5]

In the Middle Ages, New Year's Day was celebrated on March 25 in most European towns.^[8] In some areas of France, New Year's was a week-long holiday ending on April 1.^[9][10] Some writers suggest that April Fools' originated because those who celebrated on January 1 made fun of those who celebrated on other dates.^[9] The use of January 1 as New Year's Day was common in France by the mid-16th century,^[5] and this date was adopted officially in 1564 by the Edict of Roussillon.

In the Netherlands, the origin of April Fools' Day is often attributed to the Dutch victory at Brielle in 1572, where the Spanish Duke Álvarez de Toledo was defeated. "Op 1 april verloor Alva zijn bril." is a Dutch proverb, which can be translated to: "On the first of April, Alva lost his glasses." In this case, the glasses ("bril" in Dutch) serve as a metaphor for Brielle. This theory, however, provides no explanation for the international celebration of April Fools' Day

AND THESE OF COURSE  (copy and paste)

http://tiphero.com/top-10-worst-april-fools-day-fails-of-all-time/

HAVE A GREAT DAY

BAD DECISIONS MAKE FOR GREAT STORIES

There is a saying...The last words a Redneck says before he dies are "Hey, hold my beer and watch this"....

Have you ever been part of a scenario where you KNOW that it is not going to end well, but you watch it unfold in slow motion just so you can tell the story later?  

As we grow older and mature, we are less Kelsoish (Ref: That 70's show) and use a bit more common sense than we did when we were 18 and knew everything.  We are no longer 10 feet tall and bullet proof.  We have all made bad decisions at some point in our life. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but now? Not so good.  It can be a life long thing like getting married to the wrong person, and not listening to that little voice in your head.  As we grow older, we start to learn that the little voice knows what it is talking about. 

Remember the old days when you used to regale your friends with the "weekend"...I know every one of us has told the story ..."I got hammered, threw up twice in the ficus tree, got into a brawl, left my pants .. I don't know where, and woke up in my car with the cops tapping on the window....................It was a blast, man" Bad decision, great story about jail.  

Many of these decisions we make involve alcohol.  The bad decision elixor. The juice of irresponsibility.  The old "Sorry I trashed your house by driving my car into your living room. I was drunk..." 

I have been sober for 34 years, so I can not use that excuse anymore.  Now I just have to say, "Sorry, I'm just a dumbass I guess..."  

I suppose all our kids and grandkids will all have great stories to tell based of really bad decisions.  It's our rite of passage from know it all youth to I really don't want to know adulthood. 

So today, with all my heart, I ask you to think twice about that bungee jump....

Have a great day!