Did you make prank phone calls as a kid? 1970's telephone terrorism.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m assuming that most people have made at least one prank phone call in their childhood (or as an adult). I was just remembering some of the ones I made.

Me and my friends used to call up people and the converstation went something like this:

Me: your cat is in my garden
Victim: i don’t have a cat
Me: well, i don’t have a garden either

Then, we’d roar with laughter. It’s not funny now, but in our pre-pubescent fervor, we thought we’d struck comedic gold.

There was also a local fast food place that would give you a number when you placed your order, and they’d call it on their intercom when the food was ready. So, we would call the fast food place and say, "I’m looking for my friend Michael Hunt, we have a family emergency, can you page him on your intercom…and he goes by Mike. So, they would page him, “Mike Hunt” Again, we thought it was hilarious. I think we saw that on a movie, American Graffiti or something.

But my favorite one was when my friend (who sounded very old on the phone) would call unsuspecting people and say, “this is the telephone repair man and I’m working in your area. I will be making some test calls to your line… please don’t answer the phone, it could cause an electric shock on my end”. Then, we’d call back and they wouldn’t answer. We’d let it ring a long time, then hang up and immediately call back and let it ring and ring forever. Most of the time, they’d eventually answer. And when they did, we’d scream as if we’d been electrocuted.

One more that comes to mind. We would call people and say, “mom, i’m at the theater and the movie is over, can you come pick me up?” Then, the victim would say, “sweetie, you’ve got the wrong number”. Then, we’d say that we were at a payphone and fake a crying spell because we’d just spent our last quarter on the payphone. Then, we’d ask the victim if she could call our “mom” for us and tell her to come pick her child up. Often, we’d give the victim the phone number of another person that we’d had previously terrorized that day.

This was back in the 70’s. We were bored kids in a small town.

Do kids still make prank phone calls? If you did, what were your favorites?

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Them: Hello?
Us: BANG!
Them: Huh?
Us: (Hang up and giggle)

Not sure why we thought that was funny. But one time a cute-sounding girl answered.

Her: Hello?
Me: BANG!
Her: pause Hiiiiii!

3

What, no calling a store and doing the following:

“Do you have Prince Albert in the can?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you better let him out before he suffocates.”

4

“Hello…is your refrigerator running?”

<Nope, never did it :)>

5

Once, we called an old lady and said that her cat was in our garden and she immediately said that she was going to call the police and have the call traced. Wow, we were all terrified and we knew that we’d get into big trouble.

6

I actually heard this once. Valentine’s Day, 1990, in a Mexican-styled restaurant in this town. After the hapless server called it out a few times, another server rushed over to her and whispered something in her ear, presumably telling her that she had fallen for a joke.

There is a sheriff in nearby Aiken County. His name is Mike Hunt. I’ve always wanted his campaign slogan to read “Mike Hunt IS Aiken.”

7

I used to call 911 and hang up. Boy howdy were the cops not happy when they found out who was doing it.

8

Yes, and they were sometimes fairly involved. My friend’s sister was older than us and would call people up soliciting money for made up charities. People in the neighborhood were surprisingly open to donating to Queers Have Rights. My friend would record the calls so even if I wasn’t around that day I got to listen.

I remember one upping each other. See who could keep it going the longest without running out of BS or cracking up, see who could thing of the next one that didn’t suck. I greatly admired the kid who came up with the idea of arranging fake children’s parties at McDonald’s.

We never got to the point of what (if I recall) was later called cactusing, that is, ordering strip-o-grams and two dozen pizzas for delivery to an unpopular teacher’s house or getting their mail forwarded to Belgium. I’m glad, because by then you’re heading into antisocial freakdom.

It’s been years since I got a prank call; I assume because of caller ID. Does anyone still getting random kids calling up trying to be funny?

A webcomic called Wizzywig reminds me a bit of those days.

9

Oh yes, back in the seventies, in my early teens, there was a whole evening’s entertainment to by had with a phone box and a few 2p pieces. Hey, we had no video games, only three channels on TV, etc etc.

“Is Mr Wall there?”
“No…”
“Well is Mrs Wall there?”
“No… I think you have the wrong number…”
“So there’s no Walls there?”
“No…”
“HOW DOES YOUR ROOF STAY UP THEN!”

Much hysterical laughter. It was fun at the time.

10

I had a friend who would call people, pretending to be from the phone company. Then he would ask people to unscrew the mouth and ear pieces (old Bell-style phones). They would, and all the parts would fall out (if you ever unscrewed one you know). We’d roar with laughter and hang up. Sometimes we would record them on our cassette player and listen to it back for days.

11

We would call people and tell them we were with the city utilities department and that work was being done on the sewer system and to not flush their toilets that day.

We would call for pizzas and have them delivered to our neighbor. Then we would watch and laugh while the neighbor and delivery guy argued over the pizza. We did this 3 or 4 times and the pizza parlor never called to confirm the order.

Call and tell someone that I was with the phone company and we were blowing out the phone lines and to not hang up their phone for an hour.

Have a bunch of people call the same number and ask for a not very popular name. The usual response each time was XXXX does not live here. After 4 or 5 times, someone would call and say they were XXXX and wonder if anyone had called there for him.

12

I fudged the main house line together with my modem line so’s I could dial two numbers, flip a switch, and have 'em talk to each other while being recorded on an answerphone. (This was in 1985, before conference calling was generally available at home.)

I put this crude device to good use dialing pizza places with similar names and letting them puzzle it out. “Little Billy’s, can I help you?” “Little Johnny’s.” “This is Little Billy’s.” “Yes, can I help you?” and on and on.

We laughed so hard it hurt.

13

I was a pretty stupid kid and not very good at pranks; my calls were to the Operator who promptly disconnected our phone – only to reconnect and call back later when she knew my parents would be home to be told of my antics.

14

I was absolutely no good at prank phone calls, because I always started laughing BEFORE i could deliver the punch line.

My brothers were brilliant prank phone callers, and could stay totally serious, stringing people along for ages before delivering their joke.

Their first favorite joke was very similar to yours. It involved calling a bar/pub and asking “Is there a John there?” After the bartender called out “Anybody here named John,” he’d say, “Nope, there’s no John here.” And the punch line was “So what do you do, piss on the floor?”

15

“Hello, Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
“Yes, this is KFC”
“How large are your breasts?”

16

A friend of mine had an older brother who was a Telco installer. He built a do-it-yourself mini-telephone switch in his garage. We would make 3-way calls and connect operators from different parts of the country (by dialing, for example, 415-555-1212 and 212-555-1212). Then we’d put them on a speaker phone and listen as they tried to figure out how the hell they ended up talking to each other.

17

Oh, I loved that one! Only we’d just call a random number and ask for John and if they’d say we had the wrong number, we’d say, “Well then what the hell do you pee in, a Dixie-Cup?”

I’ve told these in ever thread about prank calls, but what the hell:
One time a friend and I got some guy’s answer machine. We left these messages that sounded like phone sex ads (“ooooh baby, I’m so horny for you, oh I’m naked right now, I need you sooooo bad!”) Then we left the name and numbers of these two girls we didn’t like.

And what about calling the bowling alley and asking them how much their balls weigh?

Oh, for the days before caller ID!!! Kids today don’t know what they’re missing!

18

When I lived in Indonesia in the 1970s, we would do a variation of the “Mike Hunt” thing at the American Club, as well as at different hotels. The American Club would announce phone calls for people, or to announce that someone’s taxi was at the front gate. The hotels would announce phone calls throughout the lobby.

Besides Mike Hunt, there was always Connie Lingers and Phil Hatio (cunnilingus and fellatio).

Good times, good times.

19

Is that from Tube Bar? I loved the Jerky Boys prank calls.