It was a Friday. My friends and I were hanging out at Flushing. We went to an unpopulated mall to eat and play cards. As we were leaving, one of us (Patrick), had to use the restroom. He was the only one who didn’t know how to get back home himself. We decided to prank him by making it look like we already left. We went out the mall but we didn’t stray too far. Once he realized we weren’t there, he called my phone. My friend (Tim) picked up and pretended to be someone else. We joked around with him for a few minutes and decided to go back inside. Near the entrance of the mall, we saw Patrick wearing his hoodie with his back to us, looking at his phone. Since we had just been joking around, we were laughing as we approached him. When we were right behind him, we realized that it was a different person. We walked away into a hallway. This was when we realized, we had been followed. The guy we thought who was Patrick confronted us. “Why were you guys laughing at me?!”. We explained to him that we thought he was someone else. Behind him came five other people. We were cornered. There was three other guys behind him and two girls. They looked like wannabe thugs. He came closer to us. Tim told me and my other friend (Johnny) to just walk away. We realized that the hallway was blocked on the other end. He and his friend approached Tim. He started talking trash about us. “You guys want to get smacked?”. I looked at Tim. His face was filled with anger. He doesn’t have the best temper too. I tried to explain again that we mistook him for our friend. He kept trying to pick a fight with us, knowing that they had more people. The two girls started saying “Go teach these kids a lesson! They need to learn a little respect!”. That’s funny, they didn’t look much older than us. Tim and the other guy looked each other in the eyes. Both looked like they were ready to pounce on each other. When they were face to face, his friend came up to back him off. “Alright, just chill out man.” He gave us a face. They started leaving. Before they left, he said “If I see you guys again, we’re going to jump you.” We found Patrick and got out of the mall. So the moral of the story is… don’t joke around? I don’t know but some people take things way too personally.