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.