April Fools

Position: HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE

I’m going to tell you a story about the most brilliant April Fool’s prank I ever played. I promise it’s a good one. Especially if you grew up in a household with a telephone wired to the wall.

But first there’s this thing about blogging I need to get off my keyboard. Bloggers take forever to get to the point. Whatever the subject, there is a belief that without a bunch of background information and context people will not understand the nub of your post. Not only does this dreadful habit make articles longer than they need to be, the poor reader must doom-scroll through mega-pixels of information before the payoff.

Worse, there are bloggers who entice you with click-bait tag lines and the payoff is non-existent. I recently watched 14 minutes of a YouTube video that promised to tell me who played bass guitar on George Harrison’s classic ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, only to find out it was either Paul or John. But probably Paul, or perhaps John. No payoff and 14 minutes of my life I will never get back. It’s a first world thing…

Urn

With that preamble (an own-goal, surely – ed.) let’s get to it. I will not bore you with origin stories of April Fool’s Day. No one knows. Not even the French whose poisson d’Avril similarly lacks a credible foundation myth. That said, every Boomer grew up knowing the first of April was the day for pranks. As kids we’d do little things like pinning a note to the back of our father’s jacket that said, ‘Kick Me’. I don’t think he was ever kicked, but the sign nonetheless amused him. I think he appreciated the effort – and the attention.

My personal masterpiece, my “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” of pranks came to me in sixth grade. Sitting and fidgeting in our kitchen in October I figured out how the modular handset of our telephone fit together.

The handset of a 1960s-era telephone is one of design’s most enduring icons. Even today when telephones are rectangular screens, the erstwhile handset’s function is obvious. Dialling may be more than Gen Z can cope with, but the handset is marvellously intuitive. One end goes to your mouth, the other to your ear. The cord coming out the bottom naturally orientates the user. It’s fantastic. Thank you Henry Dreyfuss.

Bell

By 1970 Bell Labs produced handsets with a removable microphone. If you unscrewed the mouthpiece, the disc-like microphone would fall into your hand. Two contacts supported it and gave it power. No wires, no further disassembly required. The same wasn’t true of the speaker. That was wired and soldered in place. My 11-year-old brain realised in that moment I could remove the mic without damaging the phone. Cool!

April first rolled around and I went through the house removing every microphone Ma Bell had installed. If you’re not following this, it meant whenever the phone rang whoever picked up could hear the other party, but the other party couldn’t hear them. Like being on involuntary mute during a Zoom call. Hilarious, right?

PEACHY

Around 11:30AM I was sitting in class ignoring my teacher who I’d flipped the Bozo bit on (it’s a longer story than we have time for here). Imagine my (feigned) surprise when my mother turned up at the door demanding to see me. Innocent as peach pie I obeyed instructions and was ushered outside to bear the full brunt of my mother’s ire in the hallway. It occurred to me that as one of four children I was being unfairly singled out.

But doing the calculations I realised I was the obvious choice. My elder sister and brother weren’t living at home, and it wasn’t something in my younger sister’s arsenal of trickery. Honestly, I was overjoyed that my stunt had lasted past recess. I told my mother the mics were in her recipe box below the kitchen telephone. My father, I am sure, would have been much more appreciative.

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