Story #31 - Prank Calling

Alright, here's this week's story. It's a memoir about the time I was a bad kid and prank called people, and then got caught. Man, was that a harsh lesson! ;) Enjoy!

Title: Prank Calling
Warnings: naughty children
Summary:  The night I decided to prank call was one of the worst nights of my life.
Length: ~1,100 words
Notes: First person point of view, past tense. Genre is memoir.

Prank Calling

One evening, my friend and I were home alone, and we were bored. Our parents were out at some dinner or grown-up meeting and we had nothing to do. We had already finished dinner and done all of our homework together. There seemed nothing else exciting to do. We were both in elementary school then, so it’s not like we could go wander around the neighborhood. We weren’t supposed to leave the house. My friend was probably about 11 and I was eight. My friend decided to pass the time prank calling – calling random people, making some stupid joke like “Is your refrigerating running? Because I just saw it pass my house” and then hanging up and giggling. I, being very bored and eager to do what my older friend wanted to do, agreed.

We got out my red elementary school phonebook, a flimsy paperback with the numbers of everyone in my school. It didn’t occur to us that calling the numbers of people that we went to school with might not be the best idea. But at least we didn’t call people that we knew personally. We picked names of people that we didn’t know (or at least that we thought we didn’t know) and started dialing, fingers shaking and clumsy.

At first, it was loads of fun. I still remember the giddy high I felt, doing something bad. For most of my life, I was a good kid; I usually followed the rules. It was exhilarating and liberating to break them, especially when there seemed to be no consequences. On our prank calls, we mostly got answering machines (I think we only had two or three people actually answer the phone). We thought we were so funny and clever, saying things like, “Congratulations, you won the lottery!” or, “The oranges! The oranges are going to take over the world!” (Long story – something my mom had told me once that I had told my friend about.) Then, we’d hang up before anyone could pick up. We took turns, each time trying to think of a funnier joke and cracking ourselves up.

After we hung up on one of the prank calls, giggling to ourselves, the phone rang. Without a thought, I picked it up. It was a woman – apparently, she was the one we had most recently prank-called! I think we had tried the “oranges” one on her, and she hadn’t really appreciated it. I didn’t understand how she had gotten a hold of our number, and that was the first thing that frightened me. (Later, my parents told me she had just used the call back button. At the time, I thought she had some terrible psychic power to sniff out prank calling criminals.) Then, to make matters worse, the lady began scolding me in a harsh, cold voice, telling me off for prank calling her. At first, my shock at her talking back to me (I thought it would be one of my parents calling, or my friend’s parents, or someone random, not someone that we had prank called!) was so complete that I didn’t hear what she was saying. I felt cold all over, frozen with the terror of the realization that I’d been caught. But soon enough, words began to filter through to my brain, words like “parents” and “call” and “disappointed”. Before I knew it, I was crying, full out sobbing, apologizing over and over to the woman for daring to prank call her. I was absolutely petrified – the woman made me think that my life was over now that I’d been caught prank calling, that prank calling was the worst thing I could ever do. I don’t know how much of that was my young, shocked mind and how much was the woman herself, but she seemed to compare prank calling with murder or some other heinous crime. She sounded so angry, and I couldn’t do anything but cry. I always cried when people were angry with me, or even if I just thought they were mad at me.

The woman was a little bit kinder once she realized how young and afraid I was (I think she realized I was usually a good kid, and also hopefully felt bad for making me cry), but I still don’t remember her as being particularly nice. She tried to reassure me, and took back some of her words that made me feel like this prank call was the end of the world. When that didn’t work, she just told me to call my parents, so I did. I was crying on the phone, my voice cracking in fear. I asked them to come home, and told them that I had done something Very Bad. My poor, worried parents drove home, and I explained the whole story to them between sobs, hugging them and fearing for my life. They soothed me and my friend (who was just as worried as I was, having seen me break down, although not having heard the lady on the other end of the line). My parents were disappointed that we had been prank calling, of course, but I think at that point they probably figured we’d already been scolded enough. They were probably also relieved that the Bad Thing wasn’t really all that bad. But I thought it was.

I think that was the first time I was ever caught doing something bad. In all honesty, it was probably the first time I ever really did anything bad. And it taught me this – no matter how exciting it is to break the rules, it’s not worth it. Sure, we were having fun until we got caught. But the way I felt when that woman yelled at me was way worse than the high I experienced from prank calling. It’s like that saying – “Everything’s fun until someone gets hurt.” In this case, it was until someone gets scared, but still. I’ve never made a prank call after that day and I never will. Just thinking about prank calls make me feel vaguely ill (as does thinking about that lady). I know I won’t cave in to peer pressure on that issue, at least. In fact, I told an elementary school student I mentor my terrifying prank call story when she mentioned wanting to prank call someone. I don’t think it impressed her as much as I had hoped, but then again, she didn’t hear that lady yelling at her. So I guess I should thank that woman for teaching me that lesson, even though the thought of her still scares me a little.