Okay. So you know how, like, when you tell someone when your birthday is they say something ridiculous like, “Oh. So, like, when your mom told your dad she was going into labor was your dad all like, ‘Ahhh, you got me! Good joke!’”? Or how they don’t believe you and demand that you tell them when your actual birthday is? Or how they snicker and say, “Well, that makes sense”? No? You’ve never heard those before? Well, chances are that you did not have the fortune (either good or bad subjectively) of being born on April Fools’ Day. Well, I was born on that day, and now I’m gonna kvetch about it.

Yes, I like to laugh. Yes, I like to laugh at the expense of others’ misfortune. Does that mean that I must love having been born on the day of pranksters? No!

I wake up to NPR because I like to be informed about what’s going on in the world. Yet on my birthday, NPR and newspapers and CNN all think that it would be funny to make up news stories about new tropical islands in the shapes of semicolons or tell us that Taco Bell has bought the liberty bell. I love tropical islands! I love corporatized history! Then they tell me the next day that they were all lying and that the stories were all made up. THAT LACKS JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY! The last I heard, we take away Pulitzers from people who have blatantly lied to us. But are the news sources remorseful? No! They all chuckle to themselves over how funny they think it is that we believed their stories. Of course we believed their stories; they’re the news!

Add into all this lying the fact that I studied French for eight years. The French don’t even have April Fools’ Day, they have April Fish Day. I hate fish! “Fish” refers to something that smells bad, tastes bad or plays unnecessarily long and crunchy jamband tunes. So now I’m confined to being either a fool or a fish. Why can’t my birthday be associated with something awesome like a new year?

Oh wait, April 1 used to be celebrated as New Year’s Day until Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Gregorian calendar to replace the Julian calendar in 1582. What?!?!?!?! The Vatican changed New Year’s to January instead of April? Hadn’t Catholics done enough damage to the world already? Jesus! And this should anger many of you also, because when the new calendar was enacted, the date skipped forward by 10 days! The Pope erased 10 days from existence. Who does that? If you were alive in 1752 in England and your birthday was between September 2 and September 12, your birthday wouldn’t have existed! Can you imagine not having your birthday one year? Shut up February 29, you can complain to us in 2012 if the world doesn’t end first. That would be terrible!

In conclusion, on April 1, if you rig up my door to drop water on me when I open it, I will be upset. If you tape a paper fish to my back, I will friend your mother on facebook. And if you come up to me and tell me, “Happy Birthday and April Fools!” and then crack an egg over my head, I am going to unbutton my pants, shave my @#$%%$, and I’ll @#$^%5 your @#$%^ until you #$%&^%#$% right in the @##$%^#. Happy April Fools’ Day!

April is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].