April Fools’ Day: No laughing matter?

LYNN – They still plan to balance a shoe on top of a door and lace someone?s coffee with ginger ale, but devoted April Fools? pranksters think the day may be losing its popularity in a more serious, self-centered world.?Not a lot of people can take a joke,” said Gean Paul.Paul said he has pulled plenty of April Fools? pranks and threatened to hide his sister?s car around the corner from her house this morning before she leaves for work. Fellow Lynn resident Shawna Moore planned two fairly elaborate April Fools? jokes for this morning – one aimed at her 16-year-old son and another targeting his 10-year-old brother.?When they?re that age it?s hard to come up with pranks,” she said.April Fools? Day means receiving as well as giving, and Moore recalled a childhood April 1 when a neighbor jumped out of a hedge wearing a gorilla suit and surprised Moore and her friends as they walked to school. She suspects similar pranks pulled today might prompt a call to the police.Marie Carbone of Lynn does not plan to pull a prank or crack a joke today, but she hopes April Fools? Day continues to amuse some and startle others. She said the day belongs to a shrinking group of people with a good sense of humor.?People are more serious than they used to be,” Carbone said.Mike Welch and John Serino think age has a way of dampening the urge to celebrate April Fools? Day. Serino grew up with two brothers, and they made the day a competition devoted to finding ways to shock someone when they turned on a faucet or opened a door.?It?s a non-holiday holiday, but when I was younger, it was an event,” Welch said.Cristy Johnson of Revere thinks the fine art of telling – and taking – jokes has disappeared a little bit in recent years. She didn?t plan an April Fools? prank today, but she recalled how her brother snuck ginger ale into their mother?s coffee.?She was a little upset,” Johnson said.Moore turned to the Internet for assistance in planning April Fools? pranks for sons Owen and Sean: She covered every flat surface in Owen?s room with plastic cups and hung a sign off the back of her car reading, “Honk for Sean” before she drove him to school.?My husband just shakes his head at me,” she said.