I never was a fan of April Fool's Day and instead I've always regarded the day as cheap excuse to play a dirty prank or bully someone. Like a fake winning lotto ticket, a Saran wrapped toilet seat, or texting someone there's been an accident, the common theme of April Fool's jokes always tends to have one thing in common -- they're mean. The recipant of the fake winning lotto ticket instantly is relieved of all their past overdue bills they can now catch up on only to have these fanciful hopes stomped out, the Saran wrapped toilet person now has pee to embarrassingly clean up, and what's really funny about pretending someone to be injured or, worst yet, killed in an accident?! Exactly, they're mean.
Today I was the focus of an April Fool's Day joke and it proved to be very mean and very cruel.
A certain in-law of mine thought it'd be funny to text another in-law something about me and no sooner was the text sent but then my phone started ringing. I didn't answer my phone; I very rarely do actually. I hate talking on the phone plus I'm too busy and it's really too loud at Hulk's to even bother. I'm all about text messaging -- I am a text message junkie. Anyways, so I missed a couple of calls and when I refused to pick up they then went and called Snickers. He basically responded in the same manner as me, he didn't pick up, but he did decide to call them back later. It wasn't until Snickers received quite the lengthy text message from one of his aunts that we started scratching our head and wondering what was up. Her text message ended with her writing "congratulations" over and over.
The very loud phone conversation Snickers had with his mother, Mama Kim, was the loud red flag and instantly I knew what the big joke was -- I was the joke. Someone said I was pregnant. I'm not pregnant and I definitely didn't find it funny that someone had used me as the butt of their joke. Mama Kim was so incredibly upset to hear it was just a joke; she almost cried.
I'm married to a Korean man, it's expected I have a baby.
I've been married more than 4 years now and that's four years too long to not have a baby, many think.
I'm married into a Korean family, they all expect me to have a baby.
I live in Korea and the rest of society expects me to have a baby too, or so it feels.
It'd be one thing if we could all just brush the joke off as a joke and perhaps have a good giggle about it but Mama Kim and one of Snickers' sisters took the joke rather too far. Instead of it just being an April Fool's joke, they used it as a means to express their disappointment and how I've supposedly failed to meet their "expectations".
Snickers hasn't even been back in the country a full day. "Is this what you brought me back?" I asked him, "drama from your family?!" Ya, not even a full day, which makes me wonder how the heck they thought I got pregnant this past week if he hasn't even been in Korea. For me, that's the punchline of this whole joke but for them me not meeting their expectations means I'm the joke, nice. Don't even get me started on their total disregard for what expectations I have and whether or not they meet them. This is Korea, apparently my foreign girl expectations are to be only expressed, shared and practiced when I'm in Canada.
I'm not pregnant, it was just a joke someone thought it'd be a funny rumour to start but this goes beyond just it being April Fool's Day. This is a joke I am reminded of on a weekly bases, sometimes it's more like a daily bases. I didn't think it was funny today and I surely don't think it's funny on any of the other 364 days of the year. I now officially hate April Fool's Day, especially when I'm made out to be the fool of the day, the "family disappointment".
No comments:
Post a Comment