Screw April Fools

I wouldn't say April Fools Day is my least favorite event  on the calendar - that dubious honor belongs to the annual beginning and end of Daylight Savings Time - but it's certainly very near to that.  Thanks to my late diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome*, I had/have difficulty enough with communication and recognizing/dealing with joking on regular days, so when you throw in a day where people are even more likely to be untrustworthy, and I'm in hell.  Consequently I've taken to skipping any blog post dated April 1, as I'm all too likely to be baselessly excited or needlessly upset (depending on the content of the post in question) before I remember what day it is.  I also tend to not post on April 1, as I know that there's a good chance that someone will think that my post is a joke.**

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way - my son (who is autistic) is so upset by the very idea of April Fools that he's been dreading the day for over a month.  I was planning on keeping him home from school today, and was only saved from the necessity of doing so by the fact that his spring break carried over to tomorrow (by virtue of the fact that this year April Fools falls on the day after Easter).

Some people think puns are the lowest form of humor, but I think that the prank is much lower.  A pun is at least based on clever wordplay and can be enjoyed by both the teller and the listener, whereas a prank is nothing more than a lie with good PR and the "humor" from it is at the expense of the listener for falling for it.

*  For which it must be noted I hold my parents and doctors blameless, instead laying the blame on the lateness of translating Hans Asperger's writings into English.
**  For example, I think it's cute/interesting/amusing that my son has only 2 songs on his MP3 player, and has no desire for any more, the songs being REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It" and Crazy Frog's version of "Axel F", but if I had written the post I originally planned to make about that, people would have thought it was an April Fools post (and not a particularly good one, at that).***
***  People would also expect that the links in the post would go to songs other than the ones they're identified as.  Which I suppose would be kind of funny, but getting people over the age of 10 to listen to Crazy Frog is quite humorous enough, without resorting to cheap tricks.