Happy April Fools’ Day! Have you been fooled yet? Or fooled anyone? What’s the best April Fools’ joke you ever witnessed or experienced?
Today is also the first day of National Poetry Month, a celebration that I enforce upon the poor hapless souls here at Semicolon family every year, whether they like it or not. I choose to believe that secretly they do, like it, that is.
I like poetry. Not all poetry, but lots of poetry. My younger children like poetry, too. They memorize poetry. We had a Poet-Tea a couple of weeks ago where we read poems out loud, and drank tea, and a lovely time was had by all. (Betsy-Bee had the idea of the Poet-Tea, and she and Z-baby planned and catered it all.)
My older children (teens and up) also love poetry, but they don’t know it. Shhh, don’t tell them, but the song lyrics they recite and sing and post on their Facebook pages are all poetry. Some of the lyrics are good poetry, poetry that will last, and some are not so immortal, but they’re poetry, nevertheless.
So, to start this poetry month off with a bang and a whistle, here are a few links to Poetry for Fools:
Ogden Nash. One of my favorites, Mr. Nash had a gift for making the ordinary things of life fun and joy-filled.
Shel Silverstein. Mr. Silverstein’s website for kids is filled with poetry , but also lots of teaching helps, printables, poetry starters, and other foolish and fancy foibles and follies.
Edward Lear and A Blog of Bosh.
The best April Fool’s story is hard to distill to a single paragraph.
We went to a church that met in a funeral home. Seriously! There was a middle-aged college student who lived close by. He would go to the building an hour early, turn the heat up and make sure doors to private viewing rooms were closed and the “sanctuary” was free of…erm…caskets.
So on a Sunday which fell on April 1, he called our pastor with sheer panic in his voice. “I need your help! You need to come down here right away! I don’t know what to do!” Consternated, our pastor tried to understand what had happened. “I was moving a body and it fell over.” Gulp!! Our pastor was not given to hysterics and promised to be right down. The prankster said, “Before you do, check your calendar,” and hung up.
Some readers may think this is in poor taste, but when we worshiped in a funeral chapel, we had to deal with death sort of on a regular basis. We were always respectful, and never cracked jokes. Except that one April first.