April Fools Day [All Fools Day]

Tricks old and new

My own mother carried on a tradition handed down through her family by wearing something black - usually a sweater - but she had carefully threaded through the wool a short length of white cotton, leaving about two inches resting on her shoulder. It seems a natural instinct that someone will spot a white thread and see it as a 'foreign body' on the black and immediately try to remove it - in fact year after year it never failed.. The joke was that there was at least a couple of metres of cotton lying inside the sweater and the small piece of thread was not quite as removable as the good intentioned victim thought, and another April Fool was caught.

Years ago I worked in an office where there was a bit of a 'know-all' who had a car that was better than anyone else's - whatever yours did, his did it better, longer, quicker..you know the sort..but his mileage was always phenomenal.. This was the days before lockable petrol tank caps and two other friends in the office, starting on April 1st, got me to keep him preoccupied with some necessary instruction in the office as they proceeded to pour a gallon of petrol (it didn't cost too much for a practical joke in those days) into his tank. This they did every day for two working weeks - and gradually his claims to an unbelievable mileage stopped, presumably at a time when he began to realise they might be true. An extended April Fool joke only enjoyed by the three of us as he was never told the story.

Origins | Time for a change | Fool's Errands
Tricks old and new | Try your own