The only April Fools I saw this year was on TV's America's Home Videos. Is this an annual hi-jinks that has gone passe on us? That would be a total shame.
At 92 I can still remember the first one my 9-year old buddy and I pulled. I'm sure you won't think much of it, but, at the time, we had a great laugh at how clever we were. We phoned a neighborhood grocery where our families shopped and we knew the owner and his clerks. We asked the phone answerer, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" He answered, "Of course." And we gave him the zinger, "Well, let him out now." And we hung up and giggled wildly at the supposed consternation at the other end of the phone.
Today this probably needs more explanation. You see, Prince Albert was - and still may be, for all I know - a popular pipe tobacco marketed in pocket-fitting tin canisters..
The end of this story played out differently from what we expected, though. Next time in the store the clerk told me had recognized my voice and, already having heard this same April foolishness several times that day as well as on previous April Fool's Days, he just went along with it so callers like us wouldn't be disappointed.
Reader's Digest helped curb my disappointment in this lack this year. The magazine printed four classic April Fool gags from past years, all showing fine imagination, as well as the fact that a great many people are still pretty darn gullible.
The magazine printed one of my all-time favorites, one I used in a column way back in 1997. Burger King had a big ad published about the new Whopper they were featuring, designed especially for left-handers. And the BK shops nationwide sold thousands of them! A straight-faced explanation of the difference to me was, "We've rotated the ingredients 180 degrees."
My favorite from the previous year was taken so seriously that angry constituents actually forced then-Senator Edward Kennedy's office to officially deny the rumor that he was sponsoring a bill "to ban drinking while using the Internet".
In year 2000 it was the British tabloid, the Daily Mail, that had the classic. The extolled a line of socks that "sucked body fat out of sweating feet", with this excess fat stored within the material so exercisers could then just dispose of the sox and fat.
But the gag that showed the true gullibility of the populace came from the Swiss Tourism Board in 2000. They reported that members of the Swiss Association of Mountain Climbers scaled their Alps regularly to scrub and polish them. A video allegedly showing the cleaners at work was so popular that scores of people took the online test to see if they qualified to join the cleaning team!
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