Surviving April Fools

Yes, it was yesterday. 1st April and the students were having fun but I wasn't. You see, I had spent the evening grading papers and had filled in my spreadsheet for the grades. Then in class I was finishing off a few grades and had to transfer between several rooms and several computers due to a guest lecturer needing to use my room. There came a point when I realised that the talk was over and had to remove my USB pen from an eMac. When the pen was inserted into a Windows PC the grade file would not open. I then had to spent the rest of the class collecting up the marked papers to re-insert the students grades. Though I had backed-up the initial files, it seemed that it was over a month ago. 

One class ended and another began. The students sheepishly came in. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Well, you see George, Paul isn't in today."

"Why's that?"

"Well, he had taken out the gear and had had an accident with the lens adapter. It's broken and he was too frightened to come in to class today!"

My expression must had been quite a picture. All of a sudden they all smiles and shouted out April Fool.

"Well," I said. "You know it's been one of those days today."

"Why," they grinned.

"I lost all of your grade."

"Yeah, like that's an April Fool?"

"No, it's not, their all gone."

Every face in the classroom went white. Then I found a more recent back-up but still had to fill in all the grade from the papers I marked the night before. So nothing has been lost except for a few April Fools.