Try This At Home

In my younger days a certain group of friends of mine had a running "joke" that we'd perpetrate on all newcomers to our little group, be they new girlfriends, coworkers, or what have you. We'd all done this "joke" to each other the first time we met, and we were all constantly on call to "perform" it at a moment's notice.

This is how it went. And yes, it was childish, mean, and in bad taste, but it was HELLA funny. Try it and see. Trust me.

So, say there was some new girlfriend at the party or get together. One of us, we'll call him Y, would go up to her and start talking about X, X being another of our friends at the given get together/party. Y would tell the new girlfriend, "What do you think of X? He's kind of quiet, isn't he? [Or if he was overly gregarious, we'd say something like "see how he's overcompensating?" Whatever]. The one thing he's really proud of, however, is his father. He was an Olympic sprinter. X likes talking about him; why don't you go ask him about his dad, say you hear he's really fast or something. This will get X to come out of his shell a bit and make him feel more at ease."

So girlfriend or new coworker would do so. X would listen, then stare at her. Hopefully, he'd be able to make himself cry a bit, but either way, X would then get really mad saying, "that's not funny. You know my dad doesn't have any legs!!" and storm off (hopefully before laughing; this was the hard part when you had to play X).

This, of course, would cause the new girlfriend/coworker/neighbor to get furious and yell at Y. Occasionally, especially if the "victim" was a guy, he'd often try to take a swing at Y calling him a bastard, etc.

Then we'd all laugh and let the new girlfriend in on the joke. The new person of course wouldn't think it was funny even after we explained the setup to them. HOWEVER, invariably, if this new person became a bone fide member of our merry little band, you'd see the former victim perpetrate this little "joke" on the next new person that happened along.

This made it all doubly funny, because after the new victim was victimized and then brought into the fold, we'd tell the old victim that see, it is sure funny when you're the one doing it, isn't it, but of course the new new victim wouldn't think it was funny. As usual. Until the next party when they did it. As usual.

Sometimes years would go buy, and just when I forgot about the joke, I'd be at a party when someone would come up to me and ask me about my dad, asking how fast he could run the 100 yard dash. I'd then have to quickly go into my role...

Good times, good times.... ;-)