1. Most people are unqualified to be making jokes.
Comedy and being funny is hard. Trust me. I try on a regular basis, daily even, to be funny. The only sure way is to hurt yourself in front of people. Not in a fatal way. Leaping off of ten story buildings is not comedy. Leaping off the roof of your one story house into your backyard pool and missing the water just might be. Shooting yourself in the head? Not funny. Shooting yourself in the foot? Possibly.

2. You have to be on guard all day long.
Every story you read, especially on the internet, is suspect. News stories? Watch it. Oh and you have to open doors carefully, not take anyone seriously, watch your back. It’s just exhausting maintaining that level of vigilance all day.

3. It’s arbitrary.
Why should we limit joking and pranks to one day a year? Like Christmas, I don’t understand why the spirt of the holiday has to be limited to a single day. Jokes and pranks should be a year round practice.

4. Too much pressure.
It’s like it’s expected that you will try to mess with people and prank them all day. Have you planned ahead? Are you sure your prank is going to be epic? If not, why are you wasting the day of all prank days to do it? Look, go hard or go home. If your prank isn’t clever, well thought out and devastatingly funny, just don’t bother. That’s a lot of pressure.

5. “Is that ironic?”
Why do people always want to know? Why can’t they figure it out on their own? As a trained English teacher and writer, everyone wants me to tell them if it’s ironic. Kinda like when you run into a doctor and then have to, I mean, just have to tell them about that pain you get when you do that. It puts them on the spot. Look, I don’t know if it’s ironic. I don’t, okay? I have no clue if it’s ironic when that guy dies from whatever after he just did that thing. Okay? I don’t know.*

6. It’s like St. Patrick’s Day but without the alcohol.
Just like all kinds of non-Irish people get all worked up about St. Patrick’s Day and wear their ridiculous four-leafed clover lapel pins, we get all these non-funny motherscratchers running around and trying to be funny. And, the next day, they’re back to normal like it never happened. And you can’t even at least be smugly happy that they’re hungover. But, about St. Patrick’s Day: stop pinching me. I didn’t wear great because it’s dumb, okay? I’m not Irish and I’m busy having a life and stuff so I didn’t wear green because I have real things to think about and deal with. If you pinch me again I’m going to qualify for an assault charge.

7. Racist jokes.
All of a sudden we get the closet racists rolling out offensive jokes and wiping it all away with an “April Fools! Aha! Got you!” Look, unless that racist joke is really funny, then just keep it to yourself. Right? Unless it’s like the one where the Japanese guy, the Mexican, the White Guy and the Native American were on a plane when the pilot announced that they had to bail out as the plane was going to crash. But, unfortunately there were only three parachutes. So, the Japanese guy, being the smartest, grabbed the first parachute and jumped out of the plane yelling, “Banzai!” Next, the Mexican guy leapt up and grabbed the second parachute and jumped out of the plane yelling, “Si, se puede!” Finally, White Guy and the Native American looked at each other. There was a tense moment until the Native American pushed the White Guy out of the plane and said, “You never thanked us for the corn.” See, that’s funny.

8. Isn’t the news a big enough joke?
Just to keep it real; isn’t it enough of a joke that we have a Democratic president giving tax breaks to the rich and getting all up in another Middle Eastern country’s war. We have corporations and banks posting billion dollar profits and not paying any income taxes meanwhile the Republicans want you to believe it’s the greedy teachers and other public workers on $50K a year salaries that are the problem. We have a third straight year of cuts to public education and a greater emphasis on standardized testing scores. Oh and Charlie Sheen.

9. There is no tenth.
April Fools!

See? Don’t you hate April Fool’s Day?

*It’s ironic when a teacher with an English credential and a degree in writing doesn’t recognize irony. Dang! Why do I always have to explain this!