Pranks I Only Watched

They were simpler days, back when amusement came fast and cheap, back when people trusted one another. Enough to talk to them on the telephone, anyway. There were fewer worries in general, if you were a teenager.

Oh sure, we might've been under the impression that we were on the brink of a nuclear war most of the time, but eh, what're you gonna do? (Most of us just formed punk bands and left it at that.)

When I was in high school, I didn't drink or do drugs. Few of my friends did, either. To look at us, though, you might not've guessed that. We were dorks and geeks, but not your typical dorks and geeks. Of course we might've been?we didn't know. We had nothing to measure ourselves against.

For the most part, I guess we were pretty boring. We drove around a lot, hung out in diners, went to movies, explored cemeteries and abandoned madhouses. We threw theme parties without absurd themes or with no themes at all, and made up a lot of games. Mostly what we did was talk.

Sometimes, well, we just got ideas. And once an idea had been shared and was firmly in place, there was no getting rid of it until it had been fulfilled. (In some ways, I still find that to be the case today.) One such idea arose about 10:30 on a Saturday night. It was 1982. The lot of us?me, Steve, Peter, Paul, the other Peter and Ellen?were at Paul's house. We were all a little goofy from sugar and caffeine, sitting around the big kitchen table, talking about old teachers we hated. We've all had a couple, and some of us more than a couple. Those teachers who seemed to single us out for special humiliations. I had Mrs. Hackmuller, Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Brown, in third, fourth and fifth grades, respectively. Those were bad school years, I'll tell you that.

Anyway, so we were trading stories of unfair tauntings, foul grading systems and unearned punishments, when a dark look passed over Paul's face.

This was not uncommon for Paul, so we paid little mind until he hissed, "Mrs. Johannsen, my kindergarten teacher... I hated that bitch."

Paul was not a cussing man, so this caught our attention.

"She was a terrible teacher, too. I don't think anyone ever dared to tell her that. Just terrible."

The dark look on his face shifted slightly. "I think it's about time somebody did."

He stood from his chair and went to a small end table.

"What are you doing?"

He returned to the table where we were all still sitting, phone book in one hand, telephone in the other.

"I'm gonna give her a call and tell her what a terrible teacher she was."

He flipped the book open to the Js. Now, given the ethnic makeup of northeastern Wisconsin, there are an awful lot of "Johannsens" in town. Tracking her down would seem like a hopeless endeavor?several days' worth of calls, at least. But Paul, somehow, got lucky. He remembered what street she lived on, and the listing was still there.

There was no hesitation in any of this, which I admired. No stopping to consider the fact that she was undoubtedly an old woman now, and that it was nearly 11 on a Saturday night. He wanted to give her the what-for she deserved. He had probably, subconsciously or not, wanted to do this for 12 years. Now that everything was there, he wasn't about to stop.

(The sugar and caffeine overload probably helped, too.)

He picked up the phone, checked her number again and dialed, as we all sat around watching him.

"It's ringing," he said. He waited. After perhaps three more rings, the following half-conversation ensued.

"Hello, is this Mr. Johannsen?... I'm sorry to have awakened you... Is?is Mrs. Johannsen there? Mrs. Edna Johannsen, the teacher?... Yes?"

Paul's eyes cut hard to the left, and he squinted.

"...Oh... I'm very sorry, Mr. Johannsen...no...I'm sorry... This is?"

With that, he slammed the phone back into its cradle, raised both hands to his temples and announced, "She died three years ago!"

With that, the room erupted into great gales of youthful hysterics.

"And so you mean," someone offered, "that what you just did is call a man in the middle of the night, just to remind him of the fact that his wife was dead?"

That made us laugh even harder. I guess cruelty came as simple and cheap as everything else back then.

Yeah, I still smile over that one, all these years later.

The other phone prank that still makes me laugh out loud when I'm alone (though nobody else seems to find it very funny) happened three years later, when I was at the University of Wisconsin.

It was about 3 a.m., and Grinch and I were hanging out in a hallway by a payphone, flipping idly through newspapers. I'm not sure anymore why we were doing that, but there we were.

The thing about newspapers in Wisconsin is that they have the best classified ads. You'll find things in classified ads in Wisconsin that you'll never find anywhere else.

Grinch started laughing, and I looked up from my own paper. "What?"

He folded his paper back, then over, and, pointing at an ad, handed it to me.

"WILLING TO PAY TOP DOLLAR," it read, "for crippled cattle. Please call Gordy collect anytime." Then it gave a number.

Grinch snatched the paper back and picked up the phone.

"What are you doing?"

"He says we're supposed to call collect anytime, right?"

"Yeah, but we don't have any crippled cattle."

I was still reasonably naive at that age, and the look he shot me told me as much.

"Oh," I said. "Yeah."

"He even says 'please' right here." He held up the ad and dialed an operator.

"Uhh...hello," he said. "I'd like to make a collect call, please, to 'Gordy.' My name's, uhh, 'Dave,' and the number is 6-0-8, 7-9..."

He waited. Back in those days, you had to let the operator do your talking for you.

Finally, someone answered. I'm guessing it was Gordy. Grinch looked around, seemingly bored, as the operator asked the poor bastard on the other end if he would accept a collect call from "Dave."

Apparently, there was some trouble, because soon Grinch was shouting past the operator, "It's about your ad, sir... The ad in the newspaper? About the cattle?"

There was another pause, as the operator apparently tried to explain this to the man.

"Uhh, Dave," Grinch repeated. "About the cattle, yes. The crippled cattle."

There was an uncomfortable pause as Gordy made up his mind. Finally he agreed to accept the charges on a call he received at 3 a.m. from a stranger named Dave who was apparently interested in selling Gordy some crippled cattle.

The call was patched through.

"Chump," was all Grinch said before he hung up the phone.

We picked up our newspapers again, and continued reading.