Prank calls when you were a kid?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Me and my mates had a great one. There was a balcony overlooking the foyer of our local cinema, and there was a payphone in the foyer. We got the number, went up to the balcony, rang the phone and told whoever answered that we were DJ’s from our town’s local radio station running a daily quiz called ‘The Telephone Box Challenge’ with the most obviously retarded questions ever. Me and my mates would put on our best ‘DJ Voices’ and have a dinky little hand held radio playing softly in the background for added realism. Our conversations would generally run something like this:

Me: Hi, you’re live on <blank> FM. What’s your name?

Dupe: Umm…sorry?

Me: You’re live, on <blank> FM. This is the telephone box challenge. Are you ready to play?

Dupe: Uhh…what?

Me: (big fake sigh) - Right, you’ve heard of <blank> FM, right?

Dupe: Yeah?

Me: You’re in a <brand> cinema, right?

Dupe: Yeah.

Me: Then you’re live on <blank> FM and all set to participate in the telephone box challenge! We’re scouring the country for Britain’s savviest movie goer and all you need to do to win is answer 3 simple film questions.

Dupe: What do I win?

Me: Well you win free tickets for the film of your choice. But at the end of the day, you win respect. And that’s really what it’s all about.

Dupe: Is this a wind-up?

Me: No. The staff at <brand> cinema are listening to this right now. What’s your name, fella?

Dupe: I’m Dave.

Me: Good to meet you Dave. Tell me this. How much do you really know about movies?

Dupe: A fair bit, I guess.

Me: Nice one. Ready to begin?

Dupe: Fire away.

Me: Okay. Who played the title character in the 1947 Swedish masterpiece ‘Mother Smirnoff’s Gums’? Was it (A) Ivana Jackov (B) Marie Curie? or © Helen Lovejoy?

Dupe: Oh Christ, I don’t know.

Me: Doesn’t hurt to guess.

Dupe: Uh, B then.

Me: Dave. You. Just. NAILED IT! Congratulations. Next question. This actor has been a pet detective, a human cartoon character, a cop with a split personality, and one half of the dumbest duo of all time. To get through to the final round…Spell JIM CARREY.

Dupe: J…I…T…UH…7…Q…SUPERMAN SYMBOL…V…@

Me: Dave, again, absolutely right. I’ve gotta say the questions are particularly tough today and you’re doing REALLY. WELL. Okay, last question. What is the first movie you ever saw?

Dupe: Uhh…Cannibal Holocaust (or whatever).

Me: THAT’S RIGHT! 3 for 3. Great work Dave, great work. Now just go up to the front desk and claim your free tickets.

Pleased as punch, they’d toddle over to the front desk to claim their winnings, only to be told by the baffled ticket staff that no-one had the first clue what the fuck they were talking about.

22

Oh that is rich. :smiley:

23

My friends and I used to prank all the time; by the time automatic call-back and caller ID killed our hobby, we’d put together a veritable prank studio, with speech synthesizers, samplers, recording devices.

We weren’t fond of cruel pranks, but liked to create alternate realities and try to get whomever we telephoned to accept it, or do surreal stuff that would bewilder people. We’d record answering machine messages, then play it back to the owners at random times. (“Honey, the answering machine’s calling us again!”) Linus would call people up around Christmas and give his “That’s what Christmas is all about!” monologue from A Charlie Brown Christmas-- no one ever hung up on Linus, and more than a few times people would thank him profusely. I’d be a personnel director for a local tech company, calling about a resume we’d received for the infant of the house, and try bargaining with the bewildered parents to have the child brought in for an interview anyway. (“Yes, the cover letter does state that he’s only 2 weeks old, but we think we could work with that, and his skill set would be a wonderful asset-- and, of course, there is a signing bonus for parents.”)

One long-running set of pranks involved calling a teen girl and having her make important financial or career decisions for someone, ignoring her protestations that she’d never met the guy. After a while, she not only accepted the fact that stock brokers, bankers, investment managers, et al., were going to call her and ask for permission to sell thousands of dollars’ worth of stock or have her talk to his publishers to negotiate a better advance on his latest book, but she’d get really excited when she thought she’d scored the unknown guy a good deal or profit.

24

Hey wow, I haven’t thought about that in maybe 20 years. I definitely used to do that too. I knew all these phone codes that would read back the phone’s number to you, make it ring, or make long distance calls for free.

As for making actual prank calls, the only one I ever did myself was done on commission, as it were. I was enlisted for an April Fool’s gag on the boyfriend of my girlfriend’s sister (we were just familiar enough so that I knew who I was pranking, but not so he’d recognize my voice). We were all college-age, and one day he mentioned that he’d never registered with the Selective Service, as required by Federal law for all male US Citizens when they turn 18 years old. He said it in a way that suggested he thought of it as a minor “passive resistance, stick-it-to-the-man” kind of thing of no great consequence.

So come the First of April, I was at my girlfriend’s house when her sister thought of having me call him up and bug him about it. I called him up, asked brusquely to speak with him by full name, and when he confirmed his identity, remained silent for the exact 3.5 seconds necessary to convey anger, disgust and seriousness before asking him: “Mr. <LastName>. Do you think that you are above the law?”

“Huh?”

I then identified myself as “Sgt. <X>” and gave him a firm speech on his duty as an American citizen, and the need to pay the cost of having the privileges of freedom and opportunity that men – no, children – like him seemed to take for granted, how registering for the Selective Service was not the same as enlisting for the armed forces, etc., etc. At the end of it he was apologizing profusely and promising to get right down to the post office to register as soon as he hung up.

“April Fool!”

25

There was a three digit number I discovered, where, if you called it, some guy would answer by saying, “Test four.” So I called it later, and said, “Test four? This is test three. How’s it going?”

Well, this was apparently some kind of telephone company repair place, because he made my phone ring back immediately and started to berate me. So I went to a pay phone and called him: “Hello, Test Four. I’m Test Five, and you will never catch me! HA HA HA!”

I was just a kid, after all.

26

One that was played on me really got me good.

I get this call from a “representative of my student loan company” going on about how I was in arrears in my loan repayment, etc. etc.

I argued with this guy for over 15 minutes, talking about my deferment, how I was re-enrolling for the next sememster, everything, to no avail as he got increasingly more determined to start garnisheeing my wages and reporting me to the credit bureau and worse.

I was getting frustrated and worried until it finally dawned on me that it was my very good friend having me on. Didn’t recognize his voice or anything. Boy he got me good!

27

One that a very good friend of mine played on a college buddy:

The college buddy (Timothy) was in the National Guard and had the habit of wearing his standard issue cap around on campus. So friend calls him up, and in his best Lee Ermy type voice, starts laying into this guy for improper display of uniform. Stuff like “IF I EVER GET A REPORT OF YOU DISRESPECTING THE UNIFORM OF THE US MILITARY AGAIN; I’LL HAVE YOU BUSTED DOWN TO E-1 SO HARD YOU’LL NEVER PICK YOURSELF UP OFF THE FLOOR YOU UNGRATEFUL TURD” and the like.

Poor Timothy was all “Yes, Sir” “I’m sorry, Sir” “I swear it’ll never happen again” “Yes, Sir I DO love my country”

I wish I was around when my friend fessed up to him. Timothy was this HUGE guy, muscles and everything, but good natured so he didn’t pound my friend to a pulp.

28

Actually they do, kinda. I didn’t know it until I visited Ohio’s Amish country, but they are permitted to use “communal” (for lack of a better word) phones, usually located in a centrally located little shelter. A lot of Amish work for various businesses in the area and find that they absolutely must give in and use the phone in the modern world.

Bizarrely enough, my wife and I had a conversation about what a prank call from an Amish teenager would be like.

Sir Rhosis

29

I’ve only really done one, and I was and adult, and it was on my mother, for which I shall surely burn in Hell.

The setup: My mum had decided to move full time to a warmer climate, nearer to family, and leave the area where she had lived for decades. My eldest brother, who is a wonderful guy, but very efficient and organized, was helping, hustling her around from appointment to appointment, organizing yard sales - a thousand and one things. The word got back to me (living thousands of miles away) that her elderly friends thought that he was forcing her to move, and that she really didn’t want to, and he was making her do it. This is likely partly because Mum, being polite, would tend to say things like “Oh, I’ll miss you so, what good times we’ve had, etc.” It was, in fact, her decision to go, totally.

The Premise: I called her up, using the southern accent which was beaten out of my normal speech at 14, and got the oldest brother on the phone. I asked to speak with the Mother, and identified myself as the county sheriff, and said we had a report that she was being held against her will and forced to move by her son. If she was being held against her will, she had to say nothing, and armed deputies would be surrounding the house. If she was NOT being held against her will, she had to say a ‘safe phrase’, something like 'No I don’t need bananas", and we’d know all was well.

SHE “What?, no I’m not being held against my will”

ME “Ma’am, you must say the safe phrase, or armed deputies will break down the door”

SHE “What? No, I’m fine, it’s all fine, I’m moving”

ME “So I understand you want us to intervene now”

SHE “No, I’m fine”

ME “Ok, we’ll be there in minutes, unless you say the safe phrase 'NO I DON’T NEED BANANAS” to indicate that you are not being held against your will.

SHE “I’m not being held against my will”

ME “Ma’am, you must use the safe phrase”

SHE “No, you don’t need to come, I’m fine”

ME “The deputies are on their way. Unless you want to stop them with the safe phrase”

SHE (increasingly agitated) "I don’t need deputies, everything is fine

This goes through about 6 iterations. Eventually she says the safe phrase, and I crack up. The topper is, she had been having a tea party / reconciliation meeting with the neighbors and friends to explain as to how she really wants to move and its all her idea, so they, and the brother, were all in the room listening to her end of the conversation. She thought it was really funny…about a month later when she was willing to talk to me again.

30

Wow, you British are quite the clever bunch (phoning from a balcony view, filling a phone box with bricks, etc). Geez, even my phone pranks pale in comparison. :frowning:

Some favorites were:

• This one is somewhat similar to what even sven mentioned:

I’d call a number at random and have a friend get on an extension phone and we’d start talking with each and totally ignore the person answering the phone.
It was funny and a lot of times people would yell to someone else about the weird call. “Hey, get a load of this. I picked up the phone and it’s just 2 people talking to each other and they can’t even hear me” (or so we pretended).

• Some phone booth fun. I’d call a distant phone booth from another phone booth, then I would observe with binoculars as someone answered the phone. The distance was always great enough so that they never could see me clearly (unless they brought binoculars :slight_smile: ) I wouldn’t say anything threatening but instead I’d get into a conversation with the person especially if it was a female. Since I could see the person with binoculars, I’d say “what a lovely scarf” or “what lovely long blonde hair you have”. If the person started looking around I’d say “No I’m not there. No I’m not there either.”
Just a bit of harmless fun.

31

My favourite character is the guy who tries to pronouce abbreviations - this one is a conversation with an assistant at an HMV store just down the road from me - I feel like going down there and shaking the assistant’s hand - he should get some kind of customer service commendation for keeping his cool (unlike this lovely lady at one of the directory enquiries call centres)

32

When I was in 8th grade I received a call that just consisted of a few girls saying “Vrrrrrroooooooom!” and hanging up. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, in 8th grade I was mostly ignored and certainly don’t think I was worth anyone’s time to prank call. Maybe it was a wrong number?

Speaking of wrong numbers, a friend of mine did an accidental prank call once. We were talking over IM and we were bored, so he decides he’d call me and play an mp3 of the Ninja Turtles theme song to me over the phone. After a while of waiting for the call I message him asking what’s up, and he’s confused, as he thought he called me. Turns out he dialed the number wrong, so some random person answered the phone to have the Ninja Turtles theme song play for them.

EDIT: oh boy, 1,000 posts! throws handful of confetti

33

God, what DIDN’T we do with the phone when we were kids?

We did the “get on both extensions and carry on a conversation” thing. Usually we’d cuss out the person we’d called as soon as they interrupted our conversation.

We did the “call people with weird/scatological names” thing. “Hello, is this Ichiro KinoSHITa?”

We did the “fake radio contest” thing.

We’d call businesses and start off with what sounded like a legitimate question but eventually devolved into something salacious (a particular favorite was calling a plumber, acting embarrassed, and eventually building up to the fact that your dick was stuck in a pipe and you needed someone to to free it).

The best ones, though, were when someone called our house with a wrong number. We’d either:

  1. say “Yeah, hold on” and then go get a sibling. They’d either pretend to be the person that the caller asked for, or, better yet, we’d tell the sibling that it was their best friend calling–two pranks for the price of one!

  2. say “Naw, you just missed him. He’s flying out of gate 73 in about an hour; if you hurry, you can probably catch him at the gate.”

  3. say “She said ‘If that sonofabitch calls, I don’t wanna talk to him.’”

34

I did not know that. I knew the Amish worked for various employers. My grandfather had a new garage built once and he told us Amish men, who were sub-contractors, had built it.

I guess a communal phone makes sense.

35

We would call a McDonald’s from a pay phone and say that I was a church youth choir leader with a busload of hungry kids, and that we were 15 minutes away. Then, walk across the street and watch the manager and staff freak out, getting ready for the rush that never came. This worked great at 9-10 p.m., because by 11 the staff would start throwing away mass quantities of wrapped food, and we were right there to collect. (It sounds gross now, but we did this.)

My personal favorite though was bothering radio stations. If they are playing rock, you request Kingston Trio. If they are playing hip hop, request Marshall Tucker. Pretentious indie college music? Something from the “Hair” soundtrack. Or, just select an artist at random (“Why don’t you play some DYLAN, man! DYLAN!”) and keep calling every few minutes until they do. This worked best if the station was small enough where the DJ was also the guy answering the phone.

36

“Omigod. So, like, there I was with like Amy or whatever, and like we like were looking through the like phonebook or whatever, and like we saw these people whose last name was Burger King, like. So, like, we called them up and said, like, ‘Yeah, I’d like, like, a Bic Mac or whatever, and a large fries, and, like, a chocolate shake or whatever.’ It was, like, hilarious! Because, you know, their last name was Burger King.”

“Wait, like, no, like. Their last name was McDonald’s.”

37

This is the best one I ever heard about. Unfortunetely, I wasn’t there for this, but one of the guys at school was telling the class about it. He was at his house with a few other guys, and the phone rang. It was some old man who had the wrong number - he asked for Betty. Chad, the guy who answered, said, “yeah, she’s here, hang on, I have to get her off my cock first!”

The guy was like, “WHAT???” And Chad says, “yeah, I’m fuckin’ her, man!”

The old guy freaked out and was like “Jerry, get the shotgun, we’re goin’ over there!”

Man we laughed so hard about that. And this was in high school. Heh. I can never think of anything funny to say when a wrong number calls me.

Did anyone ever watch Crank Yankers? That was one funny-ass show. I love stuff like that.

38

Wow. I swear to God, I’ve read about this guy. In one of the Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers, I think. To make Mr. Gotobed’s situation even worse, as I recall he lived in a town called Little Snoring. And apparently he got lots of calls like this.

39

Thought prank calls were a thing of the past, did you? Well, I got one the other day at work!! I take customer service calls for a package delivery company in a call center and had this gem of a conversation on Saturday afternoon:

Caller (teenage kid, probly 15-16): Um, yeah you just delivered a package about an hour ago? Um…yeah, and um, it like, just started ticking a few minutes ago?

Me: :dubious: I’m sorry to hear that, can I have the tracking number? (all our calls are recorded so I had to play it straight)

Caller: Well, uh, yeah, it’s ticking and there is white powder coming out of it and I don’t have a diffuser kit so I need the guy who delivered it to come back…

Me: :rolleyes: No, our drivers don’t carry “diffuser kits” either. What you need to do is call the police department to come help if there is a problem.

Caller: Yeah, well I just called 911 and they told me to call you back because it’s a legal issue. I can give you a description of the driver…

Me: Sorry we can’t help you with this, you will need to call the police department…

Caller: <click>

Gotta give him props at least for the attempt, but it was pretty lame.

40

The only time I ever prank called anyone was in college, I was at the house of one of my sorority sisters with of bunch of other sorority sisters. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but somehow we ended up calling the other sorority sisters and telling them that we were in jail. :eek: :o Needless to say, reactions were mixed.

But, the calls that we got at my house when I was in …oh probably junior high and high school were interesting. They kept calling. Whenever this one group of girls got together for a slumber party, they called. For years, every few months we’d get a call because my mom would answer and talk to them about life or whatever. These girls would call and talk to my mom, sometimes for an hour at a time. Then, a few years later, my mom was working for company X, and a young woman came up to her and asked her if she used to talk to a group of girls from whom she got prank calls. Mom said, “yes.” The young woman said that she was one of those girls.