Monday, April 02, 2007 Cole: April fools By Eldred Cole Shespeak
IT'S April! It's my favorite month of the year because it's my birth month. You see, being born on the month of April, my birthday sometimes falls on a Good Friday or Holy Thursday or Black Saturday even.
So, counting all those birthdays I didn't get to celebrate, I am still short of years in existence on earth. Gosh, that makes me younger than my age group!
Kidding aside though, no one really knows how April got its name, but it may have come from the Latin word "aperire" which means to open.
April is after all, in western countries, the month when the northern hemisphere buds begin to open and things start to grow again after the winter.
But, not only that, April begins with a day of fun and jokes - April Fool's Day. This is one holiday where everyone - from single to singled, or suddenly singled, married, multi-married, pretending to be married but not- are in equal footing.
April Fool's Day is a "for-fun-only" observance. Nobody is expected to buy gifts or to take their "significant other" out to eat in a fancy restaurant.
Nobody gets off work or school. It's simply a fun little holiday, but a holiday on which one must remain forever vigilant, for he may be the next April Fool!
But unlike most of the other "non-foolish" holidays, the history of April Fool's Day, sometimes called All Fool's Day, is not totally clear.
There really wasn't a "first April Fool's Day" that can be pinpointed on the calendar. Some believe it sort of evolved simultaneously in several cultures at the same time, from celebrations involving the first day of spring or when the first victim became fooled.
It's the day when we get to play pranks on unsuspecting people. In many countries, it is the custom on this day to play tricks on people--as long as the joke is harmless.
A favorite joke is to send someone on a fool's errand, a search for something that does not exist, or being subjected to some ridicules, or was made the butt of other practical jokes. The victim then is called an April Fool.
However, you only played April Fool's on people before midday, at midday, the fun must stop.
But in the Philippines? Hah, everyday is April Fool's. And every day, we are made a fool of. Look what happened last Wednesday, March 28.
I think it was one of the greatest prank ever played on the people of the Philippines and I think the world too, since the event was covered by the international press.
We really put the meaning of "drama" in hostage drama. Because it really was. Come on, where else in the world that a politician (an actor!) and a politician-wanna-be could resolve a hostage situation, peacefully without a bloodbath except that of the flash bulbs of the media?
They were not law enforcement officers, nor were they trained in any conflict resolution procedures or whether they are even trained period, including that of their own profession, er, jobs.
And where else in the world that a hostage taker will take on the cause of the hostages as what Armando Ducat, Jr. asserted when he staged the 10-hour hostage drama?
His reason for holding hostage the 26 schoolchildren and their teachers is to
assure their (schoolchildren's) education.
Huh? Even the greatest psychologist of all time will roll over his grave trying to analyze rhyme or reason on that assertion.
It doesn't hold up that a person who committed the same or similar crime twenty years ago is doing the same thing and got the surprise of his life when he was told that serious illegal detention is a non-bailable offense, and would have second thoughts in staging it. Someone mis-informed him?
In fact, where else in the world that the parents of the victims would refuse to initiate filing of cases against Ducat and his cohort Cesar Carbonell, because they were in on the drama?
Any normal parents whose children were victimized the way those schoolchildren were last Wednesday would move heaven and earth to put the perpetrators of the crime in jail and throw away the key!
But remember this year, April is also the month that opens the greatest "fooling period" ever, the elections on May 2007.
Let us see who the worst fool is: the one who fools or the one who let himself be fooled. Well, "April Fool's Day is past and gone, you're the fool and I am none." (For comments and/or violent reactions e-mail me at coi_416@hotmail.com)
