Speaking of Prank Phone Calls

5 years ago

Katlan posted on the smile thread about my generation making prank phone calls. I met my first husband in 1971, when I was 15, as a result of one of those. My dad was in the hospital. Mom had gone to visit him and left an aunt to babysit my two brothers and me. What do teens do (at least back in the day) when bored? Make prank phone calls! After several calls, I wrote a script for the next one and told my brother, John, to call our older brother (who no longer lived at home) and left me do the talking. Unbeknownst to me, John pranked ME and called a slightly different arrangement of the digits. When someone answered, I told him that was calling from XYZ Veterinary Clinic and our special of the day was that we could castrate his aardvark for only $7.50. The voice on the other end said, "What?". Immediately, I realized I was NOT speaking to my other brother and asked the voice what his name was. He replied, "Garth." I had never heard that name before (pre Garth Brooks) and replied, "Garth, I got the wrong number", then hung up. Then I tussle with John for a while and said the guy had a nice voice, and tussle some more until he gave me the phone number.

I called 16-year old Garth back and we talked for hours. The next day his entire family came to my house, one town away, dropped Garth off, then drove to visit another family member. When they came to retrieve him, he asked his mother if I could come home with them to have dinner. Sure. He picked me up and carried me to the car!

Three years later, we married. It lasted 12 years.

I would love to know if any of you have funny stories about prank calls. Share, please.

Featured Answer

marilyn_c

5 years ago

My phone number used to end with the numbers 6915, which seemed to set off some teenage boys. I used to get calls from one boy in particular

Mind you, I was a grown, married woman...not a teenager myself. I'd answer...he would say something "dirty" to me and I would hang up. One day I decided to record him. He called...asked me his little question, and I said, "just a minute", and I hit record on the answering machine. Then I said, as dispassionately as possible, "okay, go.". He started talking, and I said nothing. He asked me what I was wearing....I told him whatever it was...jeans, tee shirt. He asked me what I was doing....I said "recording you".

He had been talking in his best, what he considered sexy voice....but all at once his voice cracked and he said, "why???". I said, "so I can listen to it later. Go ahead.". He hung up and never called me again. ;)

Donna, I had boys who also made friends with my mother. I wasn't interested in them. My mother thought they were such nice boys. Jody was one of them. My dad ran off as many as he could...Jody was the only one they should've run off. He was old beyond his years....if you get my drift.

Anyway my mother referred to it as "Salt the cow to catch the calf.". Salt referring to giving the cow a treat, in order to get close to the calf.

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Comments (14)

schoolhouse_gwagain
5 years ago
That is a lovely story!
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maddielee
5 years ago
Great story!
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graywings123
5 years ago
That is a great story!
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happy2b…gw
5 years ago
What a story!
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marilyn_c
5 years ago
I enjoyed it too. What happened to Garth?
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Michele
5 years ago
Wow! That’s an interesting “how we met” story.
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Jeb zone5
5 years ago
About ten years ago I got a call from someone that said "Hello Jeb, this is your brother, Ken." My response was "no its not!!" He said "yes it is!" The funny thing is I do have a brother Ken, but that wasn't my brother's voice on the phone - whoever was calling had a brother Jeb too! When I told the caller that they had the wrong number we were both a little confused. I thought it was a prank call and the caller probably thought it was too!
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Alisande
5 years ago
That's a great story, Donna!

Years ago, when I was a La Leche League Leader, counseling nursing mothers, my oldest stepdaughter was at Harvard Law School, where she prank-called me many times. She would get her fellow students to ask for advice about their "breastfeeding problems". Not all these callers were female; some were "husbands." I almost always fell for it, even when I was suspicious, because I didn't want to risk "outing" a legitimate caller. Some of the calls were hilarious.

I have my own overdeveloped sense of mischief too, and I can remember a prank call I made in my thirties. A thoroughly obnoxious woman had moved into the area, and quickly became a thorn in the side of a local school district. She had a thick accent. One of my close friends was a teacher plagued by this woman. In my phone conversations with him I used to imitate her; I could do her voice very well. One day he urged me to call her.

"What would I say?" I asked.

"Tell her you're her," he replied.

Well, I couldn't resist that, so I did it. It wasn't a long conversation, but it was longer than you might think because she so adamantly defended her identity. It was memorable. LOL
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socks
5 years ago
As teens we called and had a pizza delivered to the neighbors, watching out the window as there was confusion at their doorstep. Not really funny.
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donna_loomis
Original Author
5 years ago
Marilyn, Garth and I were infatuated with each other at such a young age, that I think it was all about romance and we never truly developed a lasting friendship.

Side story: I was a thin young thing. Before leaving for his junior prom, his father took photos of us. Sometimes photos reveal things we don't always see on our own. On Valentine's Day, Garth brought the photos to share with me. He said I looked pregnant in one photo. He and I had not been intimate and I was highly offended by the insinuation that I might have been intimate with another boy and broke up with him on the spot!

Not long after that some of the girls in my gym class started asking if I was pregnant! My gym teacher took me into her office and gently asked me some questions. I told her I couldn't be pregnant, as I had not been intimate with any boy. She suggested that my mother should take me to a doctor for a checkup, which she did. After an exam and some tests, the doc determined that I had a fluid filled cyst attached to one of my ovaries, about the size of a grapefruit. Doc said there was no rush, but scheduled surgery for about a month later. The cyst kept growing and Mom took me back to the doctor and surgery was moved up. When Cyst and ovary were removed, the thing weighed nearly 8 pounds!

My brother John ran into Garth at the shop he was working at and told him the cyst story. Garth came to visit me and I was rude to him because I was still hurt by the comment he had made.

A few months later Garth began making weekly visits to my house. I always said something like, "You're here again?". He'd say, "I didn't come to see you. I came to see your mother." Sometimes I'd stay and sometimes I'd leave the house. He was sneaky. He made my mother love him. I had moved on and had a boyfriend. Garth stopped visiting about a year later.

My boyfriend and I broke up. John ran into Garth and gave him that info. Garth started his weekly visits to my mom again, then finally, I thought he'd given up.

Garth showed up a few months later to say goodbye. He'd become engaged. He had to go to a butcher shop and pick up something for his mother and asked if I would come along with him. That day we finally had the talk we should have had so long ago. I told him how he hurt my feelings and he apologized. That wasn't his intention, he was just making an observation. We both felt that we had finally made peace with each other.

Two weeks later he came to see me again. We talked for a while and when he said goodbye, he leaned in to kiss me. I pulled back, reminded him that he was engaged, and he replied that he broke up with her because he still loved me. Boom! That really was my heart thudding.

And the rest is history.
katlan
5 years ago
great story
donna_loomis thanked katlan
User
5 years ago
Donna....that's a GREAT story!

I "get" prank phone calls.....ie: the policemen need money call I get once a week. ☺ Or they won't say anything...and when I ask if they're going to talk...they giggle.
donna_loomis thanked User
Lars
5 years ago
When I was 20 and in college, I go a phone call from a flirtatious young woman who was trying to call her boyfriend Johnny. I kept trying to tell her that I was not Johnny, but she would say, "I know your are Johnny - you're just disguising your voice."

Then she kept trying to make a date with me to go to the movies, and she said she wanted to see Love Story. I told her that I thought that was going to be a very bad movie and that I did not want to see it, but she kept persisting.

Finally, I agreed to take her to see Love Story, and told her to call back in 10 minutes while I picked out a time to see the movie. She agreed to hang up and call back, and I figured that she would not call the same wrong number twice. However, I was wrong, and she did call back in 10 minutes, but I started talking to her in German. When I did this, she said, "You're not Johnny, are you?" She hung up and did not call back after that.
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Speaking of Prank Phone Calls

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