By Staff
By: Robbie Byrd
News Editor
April is a very special month to me.
It's the month of celebrating one of the biggest traditions of corporate America: April Fools' Day.
I spent all weekend trying to think of the perfect April Fools' Day joke to play on my co-workers.
About all I could muster was an Easter scene in a co-workers office, complete with a live rabbit. Unfortunately Kmart was all out of live rabbits and most of the Easter grass was gone.
So, with much disappointment on my part, another April Fools' Day passed without a prank.
And then the phone calls started. But we'll get to that in a moment. First we need some background.
Traditionally, daylight-saving time is recognized as the first Sunday of the month.
However, because of some unknown rule, it does not actually go into effect until this coming Sunday morning, April 7 at 2 a.m.
This fact was brought to my attention Monday of last week, and the story that I had written for that Wednesday's paper was shelved until a more appropriate time.
In order to give everyone a good jump on the time change, I decided to run a corrected version of the story on Sunday, letting our dedicated readers know that they had one week to prepare for the time change.
I changed the story to reflect the correct date for the time change, and placed it on the front page for the Sunday, April 1 paper.
But somewhere, something went terribly wrong.
As late as Saturday, when I was informed to make sure the date was correct, I was ecstatic to report that I had already done so. That's what I get for thinking.
I will admit, I am terrible when it comes to dates. I sometimes have trouble remembering my own birthday.
The story's first paragraph correctly recognizes that daylight-saving time starts. However, the second paragraph does not.
And I am truly sorry for the oversight. I can imagine that this caused plenty of confusion.
A few scenarios ran through my head, and as inconveniencing as they could have been, they kind of made me giggle:
church goers showing up for sunrise service before sunrise;
employees arriving to work at 7 a.m. for their 8-5 shift;
a much longer wait for the Greyhound bus than anticipated
Well, you get the idea.
In all honesty, no one was hurt and nothing was destroyed, but granted a good number of people were inconvenienced as well as a good many who were just flat out confused.
I like to think of it like this: it's difficult to get adjusted to daylight-saving time. Let's just think of this as a practice run.
So, the Easter scene in the co-workers floor wasn't funny, and yet another April Fools' Day went by for me without me doing anything really funny, intentionally that is.
Happy April Fools' Day, and get ready for daylight-saving time, starting April 7. I think