Seo’s practical jokes from the Folklore Archives:
Practical Joke #1. Birthday
Original Collector’s name: Terry Johannsen
Title of the paper: “Field Project Assignment: Practical Joke”
Class: F220
The name of the professor: Doris Fannelli
Semester/year: ???
Code: 81/63
Informant: G.K
Contributor: Jeong Seo
T.J. I would just like to hear about any practical jokes that were played on you or you played on others. You were telling me earlier about a birthday cake.
G.K. O.K., the birthday cake was a piece of foam rubber that was decorated to look just like a cake with frosting and everything on it.
T.J. Who’s birthday?
G.K. My roommate’s, and uh they give it to him on his birthday with candles and everything, he blew the candles out and had no inclination that it was anything but a real cake and he went to cut into it, the knife wouldn’t cut through the foam rubber and that’s when he realized that something wasn’t right.
T.J. What did he do?
G.K. Well he couldn’t figure it out, and he pushed a little bit of icing way and then he saw it was foam rubber and everybody was laughing real hard by then. It was pretty good for a birthday.
This particular practical joke above was done by G.K., 21 year old senior in Indiana University, and his friends at his apartment for his roommate. Folk group is not just limited to Indiana University students, but universal: it can be anybody who has a cultural background of celebrating birthday with birthday cake. Obviously, it is done on someone’s birthday. I think this prank must have come from the surprise birthday party custom because this joke is one of kinds of enjoyable “surprise.”