On April 4, 2019, I was about 3 days late with one of my best April Fool’s pranks. I made a post on Facebook that said, “Asking for your prayers today as I go to the doctor later to be checked for windmill noise cancer. TIA.” Donald Trump had been in the news earlier that week making false claims that noise from windmills cause cancer. Obviously, this is BS. So, my request for prayers was intended as a joke, making fun of a stupid statement from a dumb politician whose dumbness is so dumb, the likes of which we have never seen. This post received comments from 31 people. It also received 18 thumbs up, 10 laughs, 5 hearts and 2 shocked faces. About 9 of the people that commented got that it was a joke. The rest of the people were seriously concerned. I’m convinced that most of them didn’t read the post that close. When they saw the words doctor and cancer, they were ready to share their sympathy. I really appreciate their intentions and concern for me. Some probably hadn’t even heard the news about Trump’s dumb statement and assumed that it was a real thing. Most of the responses in the comments were statements like “Praying” or “Prayers”. A couple of people that I knew got the joke offered “thoughts and prayers” in the style of the empty concerns express by politicians reluctant to do anything else relating to mass shootings. One of my friends had a long prayer for me asking for complete healing of my body. My response was to say nothing and let this play out. I was enjoying watching the reactions.
I also received calls from friends and family that were concerned about my condition. I was approached at work by people who were worried about me. I was also told my some people that this was one of the best Facebook posts they had ever seen.
Instead of removing the post or commenting on it, I doubled down with a post on the 5th that said, “Don’t forget to get your windmill noise cancer screening!” It included the windmill ribbon picture that I’ve included above. This post didn’t get as much of a response.
Finally on April 14, I posted the following: “Ifeel like I should not have to say the, but here it goes: WINDMILL NOISE DOES NOT CAUSE CANCER!!!”