We are creatures of habit, we humans. We often react in expected ways, even if what we are reacting to is out of the ordinary.

Case in point: Last Sunday, which happened to be April 1, my Sunday editor alerted me to the fact that the first several thousand copies of the New Hampshire Sunday News had been printed and distributed with the Union Leader name at the top of the front page.

My first reaction was this must be an April Fool's joke. My second, knowing that anything can happen when putting out a paper, and often does, was, oh, oh.

“What's the big deal?” you might ask.

Apart from the technical problem in this high-tech age of having the wrong bar code being scanned at certain markets, it is a branding issue.

Yes, the Sunday News has been part of the Union Leader Corp. since two years after its founding (by B.J. McQuaid and his partner, Blair Clark, in 1946). But the name has never changed and the Sunday News has its own feel and approach. It comes up with stories and columns apart from regular daily news, in part because on Saturdays a lot of that daily news slows down, and in part because Sunday is still, for many people, a day to catch their breath and catch up with New Hampshire.

Some people, creatures of habit, pick up the Sunday paper at the store and don't even look at the name.

Others, though, look for the name first and if they don't find it, they don't buy it.

Think I'm kidding? A friend and former Sunday News colleague told me he went out to buy the paper last Sunday and couldn't find it. He asked a store clerk where it was and the clerk, correctly, held up a paper with Union Leader on its front page.

“Silly clerk,” my friend thought to himself, and left empty-handed.

He had done what he always does on Sunday mornings, went out to buy the Sunday paper. It wasn't there. Likewise, we had dozens of people here who did what they do every night, assembling and producing the newspaper. They did. They just failed to see the tree for the forest. Or something.

Creatures of habit.

I tried a similar test on the lady of the house. Pointing to my bicycle, I said matter-of-factly, “I really need to get a helmet for that thing.”

“Why? Did you fall off?” she asked, without even looking up from her reading.

I was thinking that safety issues are so ingrained in us by Big Brother these days that she wasn't catching on to the fact that the bike in question is a stationary one.

But now that I think upon it, I am guessing it was an example of her usual droll wit. Creature of habit that I am, I had missed it.

I hope you had a Happy Easter. I still looked for an Easter basket yesterday morning. Some habits are impossible to break.

Write to Joe McQuaid at publisher@unionleader.com.