Happy April Fools Day?

By Joey Piscitelli
Alternet
April 1, 2012

http://blogs.alternet.org/witchjoey/2012/04/01/happy-april-fools-day/

What's a fool? The dictionary defines it as ; "A person lacking in judgment; one who is victimized; or made to appear foolish; a harmlessly deranged person lacking in understanding; a jester; clown," etc.

And today happens to be "April Fools Day," which Wiki defines as a day when people play jokes, hoaxes, and foolishness on one another. Practical jokes are played on friends, family, teachers, colleagues, etc. The person who the hoax is played on, or is fooled, is often called a victim.

When the hoax is successfully played on the victim, then the event can be concluded by saying "April Fool!" And this tradition can be celebrated by all involved in the hoax; to laugh, and share in the merriment of the foolish experience.

No harm done.

Well, maybe. That's up to interpretation and argument, like everything else. Sometimes, people do not like to be the recipient of a hoax, or to be made a fool by a person who was successful in taking advantage of their trust – as in the definition of a fool as "a person lacking in judgement; or one who is victimized".

In that sense, I believe, that I am a fool- because that definition haunts me.

I was the victim of a hoax years ago, and I'm reminded of that almost everyday of my life. Especially today, when being a fool is commemorated. I'm still trying to figure out who was it that played the hoax on me. Was it God? Was it the Catholic Church? Was it my belief that priests are the representatives of God on this earth? Or was it myself?

Perhaps it was all of the above. The hoax was complicated.

You see, I was born and raised Catholic, and I had been programmed to believe that God was everywhere, and that he protected me, and that priests were the closest men on earth to God, and that the world was a safe place for me as a child. So I was a happy, fun loving kid, and April Fools Day was something to look forward to. It was a day of clowning, and joking, and nobody was really hurt, because the hoax always ended in a laugh. I was always excited to be the victim in an April Fools antic.

But April Fools day turned ugly for me when I least expected it to. The hoax that was played on me when I was very young was a religious hoax. The man who made me the victim of the hoax was a priest. He molested me, and abused me, for two years, and Aprils Fools day turned out to be two years of hell; and nobody laughed -like in the good old days in my early childhood.

So am I a – "fool, a victim, or a person lacking in understanding and judgment?"

The dictionary does not define the fool as a "survivor." I was hoping it would. I'm still trying to figure out if God thought it was funny, or if the Catholic church is so fond of April Fools pranks that they prolonged the taking advantage of the vulnerable child-mark theme for decades; and this was part of a permanent commemoration.

The perpetrator priest never said "Happy April Fools Day", nor did any of his superiors, so I would imagine that the hoax isn't over yet. They've never apologized for making me the recipient of the hoax, so I haven't been able to laugh about it yet. I know sometimes, when an April Fools prank goes bad, the jesters apologize to the victims, and they say they were sorry, that it was "just a joke". But since that never happened, I'm wondering if that two years of April Fools Day will ever go away for me. And I've met hundreds of other victims of the same hoax, and none of them think that it was funny either.

Looking back now, I can admit that I have never gone to church since that horrible time in my life, and I'm still waiting for the prank to end; the nightmares, the depression, the anxiety, the insomnia- all the results of the hoax played on me by the priest, and his fellow conspirators in the Catholic church in the great prank.

And God, if you're really there, I have something to tell you. And it's not Happy April Fools day.

It's this: "Your Catholic Church's Hoax is a Disaster".