Prank calls

Have you ever prank called someone or been prank called? Share your stories.

• Ummm, not since 1975.

• I'll play. While playing Truth or Dare with about 10 people in someone's dorm room, I dared my lesbian friend to call the university operator and ask her bra size. I was floored when she did it, even more so by her nonchalant delivery: Lesbian friend: "Yes, hello. What's your bra size?" (pauses, listening. Asks again, this time annoyed:) "I said, WHAT'S YOUR BRA SIZE?" The operator hung up, my lesbian friend had won her Dare and we moved on. About 10 minutes later we had a visit from the campus police with a sexual harassment complaint. Oops.

• Only one that came from inside the house.

• We used to get stoned and call suicide hotlines, saying we had taken a lot of pills and were getting sleeeeeepppppyyyyy - and then we'd quietly set the phone aside for a minute before hanging up. Before that? The usual "Is your refrigerator running?" ("Yes.") "Then you'd better catch it!" I worked for AT&T to handle annoyance calls, and the son of the Lt. Gov. of Colorado, Nancy Dick, who she named TIMBER, would call saying his wife was getting terrrrrrible calls asking if she got splinters, and they didn't know what that meant.

• Around 1980, when I was 12 or 13, I somehow came to know of an 800 number that would patch me into the phone line of an insurance company in my city. I could eavesdrop on entire conversations. After a few days of listening in, I decided to see if they could hear me. A few minutes into a conversation, I spoke up with my newly booming adolescent voice "Please deposit 25 cents for the next ten minutes!" Both parties on the call were flummoxed and began to argue with me: "This is a business line! This is a WATS line!" It was hilarious fun at that age.

• Oh, I remember now: before I did the operator thing, I listened to two women talk about something they found funny, as and they laughed I (clearly male) chimed in "Oh yeah, that IS funny! Hahaha!" The laughter stopped, and the hysterical shrieking began: "Who is this?! Who's on this line?!" Good times.

  R5

• No. Never.

  Mike%20Hunt

• Caller ID has deprived at least two generations of kids of endless hours of fun.