Fool for a Day

I was a fool today.  But maybe you were too?  No, I'm not quitting blogging—I was just having some fun with the day.  A day of fools. The nice thing about April Fools Day is that it's an open invitation to not take ourselves too seriously.  It's an opportunity to pull a prank or be a good sport about it if you were on the receiving end.  There were quite a few pranks going on today including Techorati's jumbling of letters which made for some interesting word combinations.

So how did you react to the day?  Were you a good sport?  Did you play along?  Did you pull a prank?  Did you laugh?  Or maybe you were just annoyed?  Humor is a touchy subject as it's fickle.  What's humorous in one culture or individual is often times offensive to another.  Whenever we attempt a moment of levity we risk offending someone.  So the question is when do we take the risk and why?

I think we take the risk when we're pretty sure that no one's going to get hurt and we have a chance at giving people the gift of something unexpected.  Fact is that most of us enjoy being fooled.  It's why we go to movies, read fiction and seek adventure.  We want something unexpected to happen every once in a while to make our everyday lives interesting.  Take a look at how the notion of Suspension of Disbelief is defined.

Today we payed homage to Sir Tom Foolery.  Some of you probably figured out my "trick" from the beginning (Ann Handley!).  Others fell for it and experienced something unexpected followed by a "punchline".  Some of your comments made me laugh, and I suspect you may have had a good chuckle as well.  At least that was my hope!

So, thanks for being such good sports.  The conversation will continue here—right where it left off.  :)