Be forewarned, this story has nothing to do with gaming or technology, it's just a story that find amusing...enjoy.
I was at a wedding recently where I met a friend of my cousin's (the bride) - okay, I'm just going to call her Becky now, to avoid constantly repeating "my cousin" - anyways, I met a friend of Becky's, who I had talked to previously over the phone and online but had never met. A couple years back...actually, several years back, the school year of 2005-06, to be exact, during my freshman year of college, a group of Becky's friends were going through her phone looking for potential victims for prank calls. They came across my name and decided that Becky's cousin would make a great target for prank calls.
So, over the course of several weeks I was bombarded with witty and original prank phone calls like "Is your refrigerator running?", and "This is your gynecologist, I'm afraid you're pregnant." There were a couple different voices that called but the most frequent called was a girl with a southern accent. There wasn't much I could do except ignore the calls, but I kept trying to keep the girl on the phone longer so I might figure out who she was. Eventually, one idiot called me up but forgot to block his number. Using a site that looks up phone numbers in reverse I was able to figure out that the caller lived somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, and since I know exactly one person who lives in Oklahoma, I knew just who to call. The conversation went something like this:
"Hello?"
"Heyyy Becky, it's your cousin."
"Hey Doug! What's up?"
"I think some of your friends might be entertaining themselves at my expense."
"Oh...yeah...sorry about that...I'll tell them to stop."
"Ok, awesome. Thanks."
Now about this time, an idea started forming in my head about how I could back at her friends, specifically, the girl with the southern accent.
"Becky? I need one more thing."
"What's that?"
"I need the phone number for the girl that keeps calling me."
"Haha, that's Lindsey. You gonna prank call her back?"
"That's the plan."
I wasn't sure if my cousin would agree to help prank one of her best friends, but over the next few minutes I got Lindsey's phone number, the name of the school she went to, and the name of a friend of hers who was prone to get in trouble. First, I got an address for her school and found the county it was located in. Then I took her number, and using a scrap piece of paper I wrote down several variations of her number with one digit changed, or switched with another digit...in short, variations that could easily be a mis-dialed version of her real number. I started to call the first number but realized that if Lindsey didn't have her phone on her the prank might not work. So I first called my cousin and asked to give Lindsey a quick call to make sure she was available. A few minutes later Becky called back with the affirmative and I got to work.
The first number didn't exist and an answering machine picked up on the second. But on the third number an old man's voice came over the phone. Playing the part of a bewildered teenager I urgently asked for Lindsey, who the old man obviously didn't know. "Frantically", I read off Lindsey's real number, asking if that was the number I had called. Realizing my mistake the old man told me I had mis-dialed, but before he could hang up I pleaded with him to stay on the line for just a minute. Putting my hand over the phone I had an imaginary conversation with another man (also myself, but with my best gruff-sounding voice) asking if I could redial, which the gruffer me flatly refused. Back on the phone again I informed the old man that I was at the county jail (the very same county I had looked up earlier) because of a "misunderstanding." I gave him my name and begged for him to call Lindsey to ask her to come pick me up. After a few seconds of consideration the man agreed and I gave him Lindsey's name and number.
Not 5 minutes later I got a call from Becky saying that Lindsey had just called her, frantic with the news of her friend in jail. After hanging up with Becky I waited a few more minutes and then called Lindsey. Since she didn't know that I knew that she was the one prank calling me, she was a bit surprised to get a call from me, though honestly, not as surprised as I'd thought she'd be. But she quickly informed me that now was NOT a good time because she had to go pick up her friend from jail, and she didn't know what had happened, or why her friend had called her, or where the jail even was...
"It's Chris isn't it?" (I don't know if that's the name I used since I can't remember just now, but go with it...)
"What? How'd you know that?"
"Because I made the call."
"What do you mean you made the call? Doug, I really have to go, can we talk later?"
"Lindsey, you don't have to pick him up, it was a prank phone call."
"What? No it wasn't, you didn't call me, I got a call from some old guy..."
"Who said your friend mis-dialed. I know. It was me."
"You called the old guy?"
"Yes."
"Oh...wow."
"Yep...gotcha."
And so ends my greatest prank phone call ever. I'm just so proud of it that I had to share it. Plus, I figure someone else can now use my genius for their own nefarious purposes. Anyways, after calming her down, Lindsey and I called a truce but I didn't meet her for another 5 years, and when I did I was a little afraid she might think I was a jerk, or a creep, or worse...but apparently that kind of stuff is normal down in Oklahoma so it's all good. The End.
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