Bo Jest is the jokester of the family, but when he swaps his stepmother’s diamond with a fake as a prank, a friend of his swaps out the diamond for another fake as a prank, but then the friend is killed in a freak safe-falling-on-his-head accident, and nobody ever knows what happened to the real diamond. And because she wanted to protect the reputation of her foster son, the diamond woman claims she hocked the real one years ago. And so, with the rest of the family knowing the truth, Bo Jest must run away to join the French Foreign Legion, or else get beaten upon for his jerky deeds by everyone else who got a favor from his benevolent stepmother.
Once in the Foreign Legion, Bo Jest does not get along with his commanders, and he almost gets executed, but one prank he pulls on an officer gives them an idea of how to fight the Arabs, using Bo Jest’s pranks, and his arsenal of joke shop novelties; and because the Arabs are not natural pranksters, they fall for everything, and soon the Foreign Legion conquers the entire Middle East and North Africa, leaving the native populations shivering in terror of their banana peels, whoopee cushions, squirting lapel flowers, joy buzzers, requests to pull their fingers, exploding cigars, flaming bags of poop, urine-filled water balloons, etc. But out of jealousy, Bo Jest’s commanding officer wants to kill him, but comically, he slips on a banana peel of his own placement he had forgotten about, and dies of a skull fracture (after making a really funny noise when he lands, and then farting a really long, squeaky fart that makes everyone laugh themselves silly).
And so it was that Bo Jest took over the French Foreign Legion, and used it to be a force for practical jokes against all the peoples of the world, necessitating The Great War, which everyone tries to say was about something else, but that’s only because they’re embarrassed about the truth, with flaming poop still on their boots, and mad that Bo Jest always signs his treaties with disappearing ink, so he doesn’t have to honor them later.
