Let’s Just Call It April First

I think maybe I enjoy a harmless prank every now and then. Like green food coloring in ketchup or a baked potato that’s actually ice cream. I appreciate the opportunity to hold space for an inside joke with someone in my life. A chance to create a moment of pause for a light-hearted reason. But the thing is, most pranks are not harmless.

Most pranks are at the expense of someone. They might be planned in good fun, but they are designed to deceive. The purpose of pranks are to convince someone that a lie is true with such conviction that they believe your lie. Then you tell them you were just kidding, that you should’ve seen their face, and you expect them laugh along with you.

Maybe they do. Maybe they actually think the prank was funny and harmless. But most of the time I think people just laugh to be polite. That you might think it was hilarious, but they are secretly seething on the inside. Because no matter what, when you pull a prank on someone you are asking them to doubt themselves.

We spend our lives building trust with the people we interact with. Our family, our friends, and even random strangers. Our word is only as good as the reputation we’ve earned for our ability to keep our word. So we do our best to interact with honor and integrity.

Each time we fail to live up to our words, when we break promises and let people down, we relearn how long it takes to rebuild from those moments. Whenever we fall short of being the people we intend to be, we pay for it again and again until we’ve proven that we can take ownership of our less than stellar moments. That we can admit when we’re wrong.

It’s a cliched saying that it’s easier to keep someone’s trust than it is to rebuild it. But it’s true. It is much easier to add a brick to a solid foundation than it is to reach that same brick after you’ve smashed your structure. To have to start from scratch and build from the bottom. So we do our best to keep our word. To be honest and reliable.

But then, for one day a year, even some of the most trustworthy people in our lives decide to put that in jeopardy. For the sake of a harmless prank. For the sake of an April Fools Day joke.

I’m all for baked goods that look like ballpark food and unnatural colors of ketchup. But I draw a hard line at anything and everything designed to truly fool someone. Harmless or not, I despise the April Fool’s Day product launches that litter social media. And the way we scheme so that we can blatantly throw trust out the window for 24 hours.

People say that it’s all in good fun. That it’s all in the spirit of the holiday. But how do you trust someone after they went to such lengths to deceive you? How can you wake up on April 2nd ready to pretend that you don’t feel like someone took advantage of your trusting nature? It’s simple. You can’t.

The world does not need more deception and more lies. More harmless pranks that make us laugh at the expense of someone else’s confidence and convictions. The world does not need more April Fools Day jokes.

I know there are plenty of people out there that love this made up holiday. People that like to spend the first day of April proving to themselves that they can spot a practical joke better than the next person. I don’t. And every year I’m going to continue calling this day what it is. To me, it will always simply be April 1st.