Episode 54 • Jokes
Play a prank on someone
Prank call
Got you!
The joke's on you
Pull someone's leg
Story
Ricky: Hey. Hey, Luke. Wanna play a prank on my sister? She’s right over there.
Luke: What? Why?
Ricky: C’mon! It’ll be fun.
Luke: Alright… Have you got a plan?
Ricky: Ehm… How about a prank call?
Luke: Okay, whatever, but you’re making the call.
Ricky: Alright, okay, check this out.
[Phone rings]
Mary: Hello.
Ricky: [laughing] You don’t know me, but I know where you live and I’m coming over right now.
Mary: What? Who is this?
Ricky: Ha! Ha! Got you! [phone clicks] Man, that was funny! What is she-? Mary, Mary it was me! It was just a joke.
Mary: Oh, well, the joke’s on you, Ricky. I just called 911.
Ricky: What? Why would you do that? Oh no, I don’t want to go to jail. I’m so young. What are mom and dad going to say? Luke, please, tell her it was just a joke…
Mary: Oh my gosh, Ricky. I’m pulling your leg. Of course I didn’t call the police!
Ricky: Oh…Okay.
Questions
Oh man, that's definitely a joke gone wrong. Hopefully, poor Reiki has learned the lesson.
Play a prank on someone
'Hey, Luke. Wanna play a prank on my sister?'
• Which of these two situations describes a prank? Pulling the chair away from under someone when they’re about to sit or telling someone a joke that makes them laugh?
Well, it would be pulling the chair away from under someone that is a prank or an example of a prank.
• If you play a prank on someone, does that someone expect it or not?
No. That's the thing about the prank that someone, the victim of the prank doesn't expect it, doesn't know what's happening.
• Does a prank usually cause discomfort or happiness?
Well, it usually causes discomforting, it makes the victim uncomfortable in a way. Maybe because I fell because you just pulled a chair from under me or maybe you just told me something bad has happened when it didn't and I get really worried.
• Have you ever played a prank on someone? Or has someone ever played a prank on you?
I am not too big on pranks, actually. I think I'm just not very good at it. First of all, I don't like tricking people into-- First of all, I don't like seeing people suffer and that's kind of the point of pranks, and secondly, I'm not very good at lying, so they would find out pretty quickly, but I did have to play a prank pretty recently on April Fool's Day. I work for this company and they are an online English school and they have a lot of customers that follow them on social media, and I take care of the social media part for them. Obviously, they teach English, but they decided to prank or to play a prank on their customers and tell them that they were not going to teach English anymore, that we're going to teach Spanish, and so I had to make a video saying, "Hey, Ola [Spanish language] Español." I had to pretend like I was the Spanish teacher and not the English teacher anymore because the company was changing its focus, and it was pretty funny and it wasn't like a terrible prank. I didn't feel too bad when I did it.
Prank call
'How about a prank call?'
• What is the goal of a prank call? Pass along some information or have a laugh?
If you prank call someone, it means that you want to have a laugh
• Who can you prank call? Someone you know or someone you don’t know?
Well, both there's a lot of people that prank call strangers and I don't know why, but they make a funny voice, they pretend there's someone or something and they just laugh. That's it.
• Have you ever made or received a prank call? Do you find them funny?
I don't find them funny. Again, I don't like seeing people suffer or people being ridiculed, so I'm not a big fan of prank calls, but if it's like a funny thing among friends then it's different. For example, remember back in the day when the movie, The Ring came out, if you don't know it's a horror movie, it's pretty scary. I hate horror movies, but for some reason, I went to the movies with my friends. I was like 14 or something. I was very young. We went to the movies, we watched the whole thing, and the whole thing about The Ring is that like in the movie, people would get a phone call from this creepy girl telling them, "You are going to die in seven days, you're going to die." That's a whole thing about the movie. I went back home and I got a phone call and it was one of my friends doing the voice. I realized that it was him, but it was still a pretty funny prank call.
Got you!
'Got you!'
• Who can say “Got you”! The person who’s playing the prank or the victim of the prank?
It will be the person who's playing the prank.
• When can you say “Got you!”? When the victim realized they were being the victim of a prank or when they don’t realize it?
You play the prank, the victim doesn't know that it's a prank so at the end of the prank, you can say, "Huh, got you." Just to show them that it's a prank, just to tell them that he's a prank and that you were smarter than them in a way.
The joke’s on you
'Oh, well, the joke’s on you, Ricky. I just called 911.'
• Who can say “The joke’s on you”? The person playing the prank or the victim?
This time, it's the victim.
• When do they say it? Before, after or during the prank?
It's after the prank after they realized that it was a prank, they can say, "The joke's on you." We're going to see why now.
• If the victim says “The joke’s on you”, did the prank have the outcome we expected?
No. The prank has like a plan, right? It's something that you plan beforehand and you think it's going to get you to a result. For example, getting your sister angry or sad or scared. In this case, that didn't happen, but even if it did happen, there was a bigger result, which was the sister called the police. This is unexpected and it's causing now a problem to the person who played the prank, who wanted to originally cause the problem. Really that's what you say. It's kind of like a revenge say, "Huh, the joke's on you. You're going to have a problem. You were playing a joke on me, well, now the joke's on you." Hopefully, you understood it. It's kind of complicated as a concept.
• Has someone ever done something bad to you that made you think the joke was on them?
This was back when I was in high school and I wasn't a very good student. I remember this one morning, I went in and I left my stuff in a classroom and I walked out because the class hadn't started yet, and I walked back in and I see my notebook is missing, the notebook with the homework. I look around and I see another student who had taken my notebook and was copying my homework. In that moment, I got really mad, not because he was copying my homework, but because he didn't ask. I went up to him and I told him, I was like, "Well, the joke's on you," because you were trying to trick me, but now you're the one with the problem because you're copying homework. That's probably not right. That would have been a good example of when I said the joke's on you.
Pull someone’s leg
'I’m pulling your leg. Of course I didn’t call the police!'
• If you’re pulling someone’s leg. Are you telling them the truth or not?
If you pull someone's leg, you are not telling them the truth.
• Are you doing that to hurt them or are you doing that in a playful way?
You're doing that in a playful way. You're telling them something that's not true, but that you're doing that as a joke, not to hide something.
• How do you feel when someone is pulling your leg. Do you think it’s funny or not?
Do you think it's funny or not? I think it's funny, although sometimes there's people that do it too much and then you never know when to believe them or not, but if it's like once in a while I think it's really funny.
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