Sand Mountain Reporter

I was driving to work Wednesday, listening to the radio and feeling pretty good because the radio was actually working.

Then I heard a story about how this April Fool’s Day, there is no room for practical jokes in the office, according to some expert.

Really? Things are bad enough and now we can’t even have a little fun on days that were originally designed to be fun?

I spent the majority of March trying to think of the perfect April Fool’s gag.

I remember last year at this time, I was unemployed and had a lot of time on my hands.

Unfortunately, I did not have anything to do, which would explain why I was reading about soccer.

I’m not making fun of anyone who plays soccer. It is a very demanding sport.

Any sport where the refs have to be in just as good as shape as the athletes definitely deserves some respect in the sports realm.

I just don’t understand soccer.

Anyway, I was reading about soccer on ESPN.com and the front-page story was about how a soccer team had a wild night out on the town.

Two of them ended up in the hospital and the rest of them were thrown in jail.

I was thinking this is awesome. The story was hilarious.

Then I get to the end and it says April Fool’s.

Needless to say, I was crushed and it really put a damper on my productivity for the day.

While that was a great gag, the problem is it’s been done before.

According to museumofhoaxes.com, it was in 1957 when the British Broadcasting Channel’s news show did a story announcing the elimination of the “spaghetti weasel.”

As everybody knows, the spaghetti weasel eats spaghetti trees.

Well, the BBC ended up getting thousands of calls from people asking how grow a spaghetti tree and eventually had to explain that it was all an April Fool’s joke.

The Web site has rated the top 100 April Fool’s Day hoaxes of all time and picked the BBC’s prank as No. 1.

The state of Alabama even made the top 10, coming in at No. 7.

Apparently in a 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason an article claimed that the state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant of pi from 3.14… to the “Biblical value” of 3.0.

The article went viral across the Web and the legislature began receiving calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article was intended to poke fun at the Alabama legislature attempts to eliminate the teaching of evolution.

The entire list of 100 can be found at www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool.

I still have not figured out what my April Fool’s prank is going to be. At least, that’s what I want my co-workers to think.

Jonathan Stinson is a staff writer for The Sand Mountain Reporter. His e-mail address is county(at)sandmountainreporter.com.

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