Anybody that knows me knows I love joking around. It’s fun to mess with your friends and vice versa as long as it’s all in good spirits and everybody is in on it. However, there is a line that we have to be careful crossing when we rib one another. We may not always realize it at the time, but there is a point where it becomes more than just harmless kidding around to something actually rather hateful and mean-spirited. I’m sure a lot of you know what it feels like, dealing with someone that didn’t know when to back off. Unfortunately, I also have some first hand knowledge with committing that error in judgment myself.
Back in high school, a good friend and I were in a prank war with each other (we were probably inspired by the show Punk’d, which was becoming popular at the time). It started off small, but soon we were seriously pulling off some major gags. He had made the last move on me when he thoroughly convinced me that my car was stolen. Long story short, he managed to distract me long enough for his girlfriend to take my keys and moved my car out of the parking lot. He had me seriously freaking out, especially since it was a new car and the chances of it being stolen in our particular area wouldn’t have come off as a big surprise. He made me wait one of the longest half hour of my life before he finally told me what really happened.
Man, did I want to get revenge on him! He made me look like a total fool with his brilliant joke, so I had to come up with something huge to really one up him. Knowing how much he cares about his girlfriend, I came up with an amazing plot. I got a bunch of people to spread gossip to him regarding his girlfriend getting drunk and making out with a mutual friends of ours. To make it more believable, I got his girlfriend and the mutual friend to play along too. When my friend tried to confront them about it, they acted suspicious and guilty before walking off.
It worked like a charm! By the end of the school day, my friend was devastated thinking that the girl he loved had cheated on him. In fact, he was so depressed and heartbroken that he refused to talk to anyone the whole day even after we tried to tell him it was all just one big joke. Wait, this wasn’t part of the plan. What just happened?
I’ll tell you what happened: I became THAT guy, the douchebag who pulled a malicious “joke” on his good friend. Urgh. It’s fair to say that was not one of my greatest moments.
After that day, I apologized profusely and called off the prank war. Even though he said he was fine later, I felt way too horrible being the cause of that pain for him. I never wanted to be responsible for doing something like that to a person I care about ever again. Where was the fun? It just sucked for all those involved.
As a result of that incident, I am now a lot more conscious and aware of my jokes and who I joke around with. It’s one thing to play around, but it’s not worth the hurt feelings that can come from going too far.
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