Right at the beginning
of April is an infamous day – April Fool’s day. I can remember when
I was younger, I would labor over ways in which I could pull a practical joke on someone during this day. I would think and think, but being less than creative in devious ways, I would usually resort to, “Hey
your shoes untied!” Of course this exclamation only worked on people who
were less creative than I; meaning it worked on practically no one. On-the-other
hand, I usually fell prey to everyone else’s schemes.
Consequently, as I grew
older I became jaded and cynical regarding April Fool’s Day. I trusted
no one until April 2d. I lived in wariness and in a resultant paranoia, which
still hasn’t fully resolved itself to this day (but that’s another issue for another article). Suffice it to say April 1st was a jumpy day for me (second only to St. Patrick’s Day when
everyone went around pinching me for a lack of green.) Anyway, I thought I had
outgrown my dislike for the foolishness of April until just a few years ago when I picked up one of my favorite magazines. It is a science journal and every year in April, one of the stories it runs is an
April fool’s joke. Totally bogus.
Real funny, as long as you can figure out which one is wrong. They certainly
don’t tell you until the May issue. Oh, I thought it was cute the first
year and maybe even the second, but after awhile, it began to annoy me because I found I couldn’t read any of the articles
without skepticism. Was this one true or not?
Could I trust the author or was it a joke? I soon found that I didn’t
even want to purchase the April edition because I couldn’t trust the magazine’s veracity.
Perhaps, it’s silly
to take such a prank seriously, and in truth it is pretty funny to think about some of the harmless gags played on people
around this time of year, but there is an interesting principle I observe in my relationship to my favorite magazine. That principle is this: “It only takes one little lie to tear down a monument
of trust.” The old sage illustrated this principle better when he said,
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” And
the writer of Proverbs also said it clearly in this line, “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who
is perverse in speech and is a fool.” (Proverbs 19:1) Clearly, the greater
fool may not be the hoodwinked one, but rather he who sacrifices his honor for a ruse.
Anyway, I suppose I will
lighten up and buy my science journal again in May and be happy that 11 months out of the year I can trust them. On the other hand, maybe I’ll let April Fool’s Day remind me that nothing is quite so valuable
or quite so fragile as trustworthiness.
