This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Today's column is actually a warning. It's April Fools' Day, the annual celebration of idiocy. Be careful.
My wife says April Fools' Day should have been my birthday. I argue against that because it's the day when you're supposed to make someone ELSE feel foolish rather than be that yourself.
Pranks intended to make people feel foolish range from the benign (prank phone call) all the way up to the spectacular (pretending you're dead).
It's the latter pranks that make April Fools' Day a bit of a misnomer. Most people I know don't settle for pulling a mild prank to make the target feel foolish. They're more into utter humiliation — stuff such as exploding toilets, chemical depilatories (hair removers), writing rude comments on your face while you're asleep or sending your wife flowers with another woman's name on the card.
Also, be careful about reverse April Fools' Day. That's when you incorrectly assume someone is playing a joke on you. That can make you feel really foolish. It can also make you unconscious.
For example, my wife once told me she was pregnant on April Fools' Day. I figured she was just kidding and made a number of disparaging remarks regarding more children, pregnant women and the expense of childbirth. I felt really foolish sleeping in the garage.
Not everyone plays by the same April Fools' Day rules. There are plenty of foreigners living among us, with completely different ideas about how to make someone feel stupid.
In Denmark, April Fools' Day is celebrated on May 1. It's called Maj-kat, or May Cat. Exactly how cats figure into it is anybody's guess, but I'm sure it's evil.
The French celebrate April Fools' Day, only they call it Poisson d'Avril. This sounds suspiciously like "Push Avril Lavigne Down a Flight of Stairs Day," but it really translates as "April Fish Day."
Today it's just a paper fish. But historically, the French pinned actual dead fish to people's backs as a way of making them look foolish.
Note: I did not make that up. You don't have to make up stuff about the French.
Not that any other country is free from this sort of nonsense. In Mexico (and Spain), they celebrate Feast of the Innocents on Dec. 28, during which they play tricks on the unsuspecting.
In Scotland, they call it April Gowk. Supposedly "gowk" translates to "cuckoo." Maybe, but it sounds eye-wateringly painful, like having a badger shoved down your pants and then vigorously annoyed with a mallet. That'll make you feel foolish.
This is important. If you know a Scot, watch your back today AND tomorrow. Scots are tough. Unlike April Fools' Day, April Gowk lasts 48 hours.
Iran has something resembling a fool's day. It occurs sometime around May and is called Sizdah Bedar. I asked around the newsroom for anyone who could translate. The best we could come up with was "No nuclear weapons here."
Incidentally, I got much of this information from the Internet. Considering just how unreliable that often is, the Internet could be one of the longest-running April Fools' pranks in history.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/notpatbagley.