April Fool’s Day is the one day of the year where you should most definitely question everything you hear and see.
Whether it is Electric Picnic moving to Ratheniska, Joe Biden coming to Timahoe or Harry and Meghan building in Clonaslee, the chances are, if it sounds outlandish on April 1, it probably isn’t true.
Retired Mountmellick teacher Sheelagh Coyle has shared with us a memory she has of April 1 from the 1980s.
A teacher is St Joseph’s NS at the time, she recalls how her students repeatedly tried to catch her out on the day.
A regular contributor to Rising Time on RTE Radio 1 in the ‘A word in edgeways’ slot, Sheelagh has also recorded the below piece for that show.
I was teaching 10 – 11 year old girls in 4th class in St. Joseph’s N.S. in Mountmellick. There were forty girls in the class.
I remember one particular April Fool’s Day when they tried from early morning to fool me.
‘Miss, I forgot to do my sums.’
This from girls who did all their homework every night and got full marks in weekly tests. So, of course I didn’t believe them.
‘Miss, my drink spilled all over my books.’ And on it went all day.
They’d be raging when they couldn’t fool me.
In the afternoon we were learning a new sewing stitch.
It was always a chaotic class with me helping to thread needles, looking for lost needles on the floor, explaining once again how to do the new stitch, girls fingers bleeding having pierced their skin with needles and on it went. I’m left handed, a citeog.
Because of that I had great problems with sewing myself in my primary school days. So, I was always mindful of the lefthanders in my sewing class and that was an added chore for me in my large class.
Nowadays, with a whiteboard a teacher would find a ‘How to sew’ video on a laptop and show it to children. There are lots, I’ve discovered. But I was alone with my 40 girls in the 1980s doing my best to teach them all how to sew.
Now, there were two toilets outside the classroom door and I’d never let more than two girls go out at a time.
But, on this sewing afternoon I had lost track of who had gone out.
Then, all of a sudden one girl dashed in and shouted,
‘Miss, they’re all messin’ out there and throwin’ water at each other.’
Well, up I got immediately, scattering thread, needles and pieces of material from my desk to investigate what was going on.
I was halfway out the door when I heard the chorus behind me,
‘April Fool, Miss.’
Well, they were thrilled. They had finally caught me minutes before home time after all the unsuccessful attempts.
They had a great laugh at my expense with tears falling from their eyes with laughter.
So, what could I do but laugh too? I had been fooled at last. They went home happy.
Sheelagh Coyle
SEE ALSO – Major shock as Electric Picnic is set to move to a different Laois venue
