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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Cranks Pranks & "Special" Calls

At work yesterday the subject of prank calls came up...memories began to fly through my head. As a child, my cousins (really friends of the family)would call the guy at the bowling alley and ask him if he had 10 pound balls. The seasoned veterans of bowling alley call takers always replied with, "Bowling balls? Yes, we have 10 pound bowling balls." While the newbies would always answer yes and in reply would get a childish, "Then how the hell do you walk?" Yes, yes, I know...adolescent, but it still makes me giggle. I could never get the nerve up to do it myself.

In high school while working retail, I would get obscene calls at work. Usually creeps who found pleasure by calling and talking about disgusting subjects, especially to an innocent high schooler. I, in turn, usually found great joy in finding ways to get the callers to hang up on me. My favorite was usually pretending that I couldn't hear or understand what they were saying and eventually they would get so irritated that they would hang up on me. My favorite call ever had to be the one where a particularly bored creep called the store and proceeded to describe what he was doing...alone! Yes, you get the picture, not a pretty one either. What was my witty (obviously, didn't think first) reply. It was, "Man, get a grip." His unfortunate reply, "I am." Yup, needless to say I started laughing so hard, I had to hang up on him. At least he was somewhat quick witted and provided me with a chuckle to this very day.

Just an aside before I continue...For those people closest to me, you know that I love to aim sarcasm at you. If I am not mean to you, don't say sassy things around you, etc. 1) I either don't like you very much or 2) I think you will either cry or get angry and then I would have to apologize. Really, I don't like doing that much either. So, those of you that are harassed by me, are truly loved. If I can have something come back to haunt someone repeatedly, I will do just that, bring it up repeatedly. That's just the way I am. Somewhat evil at times, I know.

The other reason I do these things is that I want to create a better future generation. Which brings me to my modern day pranksters. A young prank caller is so limited in his creativity these days because of technology like caller i.d. I had a kid call my house one day and say, "This is the electric company and you haven't paid your bill." For one, my young friend, that is the lamest prank call ever and, two, you are obviously not the electric company. Of course, after a few questions and remarks from me, the young caller hangs up on me. Most people would let that be the end of it. Not me. Remember, I am evil and this is all about that Clinton era "it takes a village to raise a child." Thanks to caller i.d., this villager called back the young prankster. He answers and when I ask if he was the one that just called me pretending to be the electric company, he hangs up on me. Does it end there? Nope. The villager calls again and gets exactly what she is hoping for...an anwering machine. The message, "Hi, this is the person you just called. I know you are there and will probably erase this message, but just so you know, I will be calling repeatedly until your parents answer the phone. Have a great day."

The villager sat back and relished in the thought that somewhere a young boy would spend the next few days like one of Pavlov's dogs. In this case, no bell's ring bringing on a hunger induced salivation, just a phone's ring bringing on a terror induced soiling of the pants. And that, my friends, is how a village raises a child!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for stopping by our blog... Stay tuned! We will announce the Lowe's giveaway winner on Friday!
    Xo,
    E&J

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