Maybe if afterwards I showed him the knife was made of painted wood, blunted completely, and I snuck a throat protector in his turtleneck.

I did more things like checking a windows install on my laptop first, and cloning his drive off before I pulled it.

We would regularly pull pranks on each other, the rule was it couldn’t cause lasting harm. This fit well within that, and he got me at least as good multiple times. One of my best friends, ever