When I was a kid, way back before caller id and on demand callback, we would occasionally make crank calls. You know, The Classics.
Things like ten pound balls, running refriderators, Sir Walter Reilly in a can. Then there’s the standard Is Joe there?
bit. If you, unlike I, didn’t spend the majority of your young life getting into various types of trouble you might not have heard of any of these things. What used to be Good, clean fun
now just gets you is a heaping pile of trouble.
The Is Joe there?
bit was somewhat unique in that it required multiple people for multiple calls. Here’s how it went. You and your three accomplices would dial some number and ask for Joe when the other party answered. Then another person would call the same number and also ask for Joe; then one more time with another person. Then finally, the last call was, This is Joe. Are there any messages for me?
Of course, with things this simple you needed some assistance from the other end or they would catch on and ruin the carefully setup joke.
So, tonight I called an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in more then a year. I had her cell phone number, so I was going to call her up and find out what she had been up to for the last fourteen or fifteen months. It rang a couple times, then an unfamiliar voice said, Hello?
I responded, Is this [my friend's name]?
To which the person on the other end replied, No, [my friend] no longer has this number. Argh!
At this point, I just started laughing. Now I have to get ahold of my friend to tell her that she should call her old phone because I bet she has some messages there.
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