The April Fool's Prank Prank

I'm not really one for pranks. In school, I used to put chalk in the ribbed undersides of erasers, so when the teacher went to erase something on the blackboard, she actually just drew large arcing swaths across the board for a split second before realizing what was going on and removing the chalk. That's about all I was good for.

My friend Miju likes pranks much more than I do. She said in high school she and her friend pulled the old Saran Wrap over the toilet seat prank, much to the chagrin of the janitorial staff. She also did an April Fool's prank at a bake sale her school put on. She and a friend replaced the white cream in Oreo cookies with toothpaste and sold them. That prank didn't work as well, because when people ate them, they liked them, and thought it was just a new mint flavor. I think it still makes a good story though.

I suggested she pull a good prank on her middle school students, since she already toys with them by making them do ridiculous things like gaze into each others' eyes and do "cutesy" rock/paper/scissors. She obviously thought a prank would be a great idea, for the sake of teaching about a Western tradition, of course. The problem is, we couldn't think of anything, but the good news is that we came up with a prank to pull on one of her friends. However, I also came up with a prank to pull on her while she thinks she's pulling a prank.

Her friend Jonathan is a quiet black man whose hobbies seem to be working out twice a day, going to church, going to bed early, and not drinking alcohol. The original prank involves a short back-story. Let me elaborate:

Two weeks ago, there was a welcoming dinner for all the new foreign teachers in my program. These dinners are a great opportunity for us grizzled veterans to see if there are any new teachers who are attractive, and for us to meet one new person before just hanging out with our friends. I was hanging out with Miju when I briefly met Jonathan for the first time. Apparently, he and I are the only two people that Miju's met and liked since coming here to teach, so we know each other as Miju's "other 50%". At some point, Miju was bragging about the accuracy of her gaydar, which prompted a short discussion that Jonathan was absent for, if I recall correctly. Anywho, the next day, I met Miju at the Cheongdo Cow Fighting Festival. After we watched bulls wrestle around, we were standing outside of the arena when a pint-sized ajeoshi, skunked on soju, kept pestering us, wanting to get a picture with me even though he didn't have a camera because he was probably homeless. Eventually he came back enough for Miju to take a picture of him sidling up next to me with her phone. This wonderful photo she later modified to feature a lovely pink heart around me and the mini-ajeoshi as she and I were having drinks out on the town that night. She then added "Looks like my gaydar was wrong" to the photo and texted it to me as a souvenir. Except she really texted it to unsuspecting Jonathan, who responded with surprise at my gayness. Apparently he hadn't thought I was gay until she sent him that accidentally, which I suppose I should be grateful for.

So with this instance of mistaken text-messaging, Miju formulated the brilliant idea of not telling him it was a joke and inviting Jonathan out with me and her on April Fool's Day so I could act gay around him and we could giggle at how he reacted. I wasn't so sure about this, because I didn't want him to punch a hole through my head if he took it the wrong way, and because I don't really know the guy at all.

But I humored her idea, and a couple days later, came up with an even better idea. I play along with it BUT I let Jonathan in on the joke, and have him play along with it by receiving my questionably gay behavior and insinuations, and answering with his own. This way, Miju would think the prank is turning on me and her, and Jonathan is really gay, and she is the one who winds up being confused and uncomfortable, and Jonathan and I are laughing at her. I ran this by Jonathan the other day when I met him and a bunch of other guys to play flag football, and he is in, so the April Fool's Prank Prank is now afoot.

FOOD

A couple of my friends went back to the states over winter break. Paul finished his contract and was taking his extra 2 weeks vacation before starting his new one, and Jen had to go home for some special surgery 'cause she got in a bus accident in Peru a few years ago, or something like that. Anyway, I wanted some mac and cheese, because you can't get that here. Not even at Costco. I know, it's a disgrace. I told Paul to get me some first because I knew he was going home first, and then I told Jen to get me some later as a back-up plan, because I couldn't entirely count on Paul not blowing all his money on booze and forgeting to get me my mac and cheese.

Jen gave me the goods first, one regular box of Annie's "mild" style - this is basically Annie's version of Kraft Mac and Cheese for all the 8 year-old sissies that think their classic purple-box cheddar is too "intense" - and a box of "family size" mac and cheese that was different from the other box, but still not the white cheddar that is so good. Not that I'm complaining, they were both delicious. I ate the regular box that evening after Jen gave them to me, and I ate the "family size" the following night. "Family size" is a huge overestimation, by the way. I ate the whole thing with no problem, and man was it good. If I had a family, they would've been hungry that night, because there was absolutely nothing left.

I got Paul's shipment a week later. Five boxes of Annie's. It's obvious who loves me more, even though these boxes were all the "mild" Kraft imitation styles. I ate one box the other day, and decided I would be the man at an upcoming pot luck/language exchange meeting by making three boxes and bringing that. It was a sure-fire champion move, except that when I started eating it at the meeting, it was terrible. It had cooled in transit, but even still, it was dry and not that cheesy. I must not have had the right proportions of milk and butter, even though I thought I tripled the right amounts correctly. Hey, even pros make mistakes sometimes. Just ask Tiger Woods. Anyway, maybe a quarter of it got eaten, and I don't blame anyone for not liking it, it was a total let down for me too. But that's OK! I brought the leftovers home and I put a bunch in the frying pan today with more butter, olive oil, Tabasco, two slices of cheese, the crumbs from a nearly-empty bag of frozen tortillas, and some Parmesan. I fried that shit right up and it wound up being okay. I had to use the frying pan because I don't have a microwave. Or an oven.

But that's not all! Jen also gave me a nearly full jar of pesto. She all of a sudden came out as being lactose-intolerant, and there are traces of cheese in the Trader Joe's pesto, so I scored a free one there. I tried to make chicken pesto pasta like my girlfriend did once, but mine came out dry and not really that good at all. I readjusted my battle plan against this pesto, and really nailed it. I've been making these fucking awesome sandwiches. I chop up chicken breast and onions and pan-fry that shit with a bunch of pesto and a little Tabasco, and then I put it on white bread, because you can't find whole grain bread here, with sliced cheddar cheese and tomatoes and lettuce and then I put the sandwich on the frying pan for a bit. I butter the outsides of the bread in advance, so by the time the cheese melts and the bread browns, these sandwiches are out of the god-damn world! I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of the pesto. I'll probably just replace it with Tabasco sauce.