Pranks Part 1: A Taste of Success

While in college, my friends and I pulled two pranks. One that resulted in police action and another that ended with us hanging our heads and being scolded. One of these was a success and the other, a short lived failure. I know they won't seem like much to some of you, but while I have put my share of Port-a-Pots on cafeteria roofs, we've always been fairly harmless and gentle pranksters.

Tonight, I'll describe the success. Why? Because it was a success. Who wants to talk about failures?

I have a friend from high school who was a really good looking guy. The kind of guy who could throw up on a random waitress' shoes and still get her number as he was put into a cab. (true story) Girls were easy for him. As I write this, I still wonder how we became to be friends. We weren't at first. He entered my school in 4th grade immediately did 2 things that became famous in our grade. First, he farted loudly during class. Secondly, he did an oral report about his brand new indoor pool. I disliked him immediately.

Years later, we'd become friends, then went to different colleges but stayed in touch regularly. But none of that matters. The prank unfolded thusly:

Phase 1: My then girlfriend (and now wife) calls him and - using a slutty voice - pretends to be a girl that he'd met the night before and had sex with. Despite his denials, she tells him she got really drunk and doesn't remember much, but is sure she left her panties in his room. She has to get them back because they were a gift from her boyfriend and he'll kill her if she loses them. Needless to say, my friend is confused. He insists they never met, but nevertheless tells her that he's looking around his bed for the panties. She reiterates how drunk she was but she knows his name and that freaks him out a little bit. He asks her if his friend PJ (not me - and a name I had never before. I stored this nugget of information away to be used later) had put her up to this. She tells him no and starts to fake cry before finally hanging up the phone.

My friend (and one-time co-blogger) Jon has 3 talents: He can play piano, he can make a realistic looking vagina with the extra skin on his knees and he can drop his voice about 3 octaves and sound menacing on the phone. One of these skills was put to use on this night. Another was put to use every other night that week.

Phase 2: After about 15 minutes, Jon picks up the phone and calls my friend. Jon pretends to be the slutty girl's boyfriend and he's pissed that not only was his drunk girlfriend taken advantage of, but her birthday panties are gone. He keeps using my friend's name which makes him a little afraid. Jon used some perfectly scripted lines:
"I know guys like you and I hate them."
"She drinks too much sometimes and assholes like you take advantage."
"Somebody needs to teach you a fucking lesson."
"How about I come down there and we talk this out man to man?"
It's worth noting here that I knew my friend's address and Jon made sure to mention it. This seriously freaked him out.
"Listen man, fuck this. I'll be down there in twenty minutes."
He slams the phone down.

I have something of a habit of calling people at exactly the wrong time. It's not on purpose, it's just the kind of timing I've always had. You know that friend at the bar who's always turning and knocking people's drinks over, or pointing to something and hitting a waitress in the face? That's me. I've called 2 friends within minutes of a devastating break up and another just moments after learning of a parent's death. Basically, if you see my name on your cell phone, I'd check around and make sure the people you care about are okay.

Phase 3: I casually call my friend. I hadn't talked him in a few weeks, so nothing seems out of the ordinary. My friend picks and immediately tells me the following:
"I can't talk now. The cops are here. I'll call you back later."
He hangs up and I shit my pants.

I didn't know what kind of call tracing equipment the police have. I didn't know if living in a dorm would protect my phone from being located. But I did know that if the calls could be traced to my dorm room that I was up shit's creek without a paddle, a boat, a map or even a lifejacket.

So, for about twenty minutes the three of us sat in silence, exchanging nervous wordless looks like a couple of teenagers staring at a home pregnancy test.

The phone rings. It's my friend. "What a night," he says.
"Why were the cops there?" I tried to sound innocent.
"It's a long story." And in what I think might be the cruelest part of the whole ordeal, I allow my friend to relate the entire saga to me in painstaking detail. He tells me about the cops standing watch at his place for an hour while back at the station, they were trying to trace the calls. And after he gets past the part about how the police were unable to successfully trace the calls, I offered a possible solution.

"You know what I think," I say. "I think your buddy PJ might be behind all this."

There are different kinds of silence. This one was long, and difficult only in the sense that it was hard not to laugh during it. The silence was eventually broken by what sounded like his lower lip being torn apart by his front teeth as he shouted one of the strongest, and quite possibly the angriest and most emotional "FUCK" I've ever heard. It was a vicious "fuck." One with wide eyes, lots of spit and possibly a few burst blood vessels.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who holds a grudge. I wish I could say the same for my former friend.