With this new calendar, New Year’s Day was moved to January 1^st. Some traditionalists like those in France refused to accept the new date and continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1^st.  Others made fun of these “backward” folks by sending them on “fool’s errands” and deceiving them with little tricks.

Even in this age of high tech, April Fool’s Day continues. Now computers are being used to perpetrate  April Fool’s jokes and tricks. While these activities go on year round, the 1^st of April always brings a torrent. The most aggravating joke may be one called “Buttons” which covers your computer screen with little pop up windows. You take the time to close each one and when you get to the last one a new batch of pop ups appears. Another now famous prank is the “Drunken Mouse” in which your mouse starts traveling all over the screen. There are also a ton of similar button and mouse chasing pranks as well as screen high jinks, and sound shenanigans. Tricks like this will drive you crazy unless you have enough computer knowledge to press Alt-Ctrl-Delete to end the foolery.

Some computer pranks are a little more subtle, like the prankster version of Clippy. Clippy is a paperclip-looking office helper that comes with many versions of Microsoft Office. With this joke you can make Clippy appear at a bothersome rate with messages like “Your posture seems to be degrading, please reposition yourself now.” To find these and other pranks just visit any search engine and type in “April fools”, or “computer pranks”. You are sure to find enough to last for several April Fool’s Days.

In the past, many of these pranks were e-mailed to friends and associates as attachments. Today, with the constant urging of computer experts not to open attachments for fear of spreading viruses, less are being circulated by e-mail. But this hasn’t stopped office associates and family members from playing computer pranks on office mates, siblings, and even on parents. (Kids, please don’t tell your parents that you got the idea from me!)

E-mail is still being used to circulate all types of jokes, caricatures, and funnies. Some of the old stand-bys are still going around after years. The joke about Microsoft’s bid to acquire the Catholic Church has been making the rounds on the Internet since 1994. The one about the Internet being closed for cleaning on April 1^st has been around almost as long.

This year you may fall prey to the old “your shoelace is untied” trick, or you may find that someone has inserted a little prank into your computer. If you do, just have a good laugh and remember William Shakespeare’s quote from As You Like It, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”