The other day, one of my children found my old Senior Prom announcement and brought it up to me. It has some poems about how fabulous the class of ‘93 was is and a description of the prom’s theme. The theme was "Make It Last Forever" (Which is fitting because, MAN!, I thought it would never end!) and the colors were emerald green, violet, and white gold. Yes, it actually says white gold and not pearly white, shiny white, or even just plain old white…which is what is was. But I digress. Inside the announcement, there is also page after page of all of the different junior and senior class officers that made it all possible and, of course, a listing of who the ‘92-’93 Student Council officers were. I read over all the names, not even remembering who most of them were, until I came to one name in particular and was instantly transported back in time…
Now, before you start thinking that this time portal dropped me off back at prom, allow me to correct you. It was not prom I remembered so fondly. Prom was, in a word, BORING!!! No, instead it was to my freshman year of college. I went to Northern Arizona University and was roommates with my best friend from high school, Lisa.
Remember her?
Anyway, there were two guys from our high school who went to NAU, too. We’ll call them Jared and Jason. Being that we didn’t know anyone else at all on campus, we spent the majority of our first year hanging out with them. The four of us had a lot of fun together. We would watch movies together, talk on the phone together, eat at the cafeteria together, panic about being away from home together, you get the picture. In short, we would hang.
In one of our many "College Is HARD" conversations, Lisa, Jared, and I discovered that Jason was unaware that we all shared post office boxes with another person. Because he didn’t know about this, Jason had just been throwing out the other person’s mail whenever he found it in his box. Now, an important fact to know is that we were about a month into our second semester at the time of this revelation. So for about 6 months, Jason had been throwing away someone else’s mail EVERY DAY. The three of us laughed so hard it hurt and poor Jason just sat there turning red as he realized how dumb he had been. I, of course, was quick to point out that he had been committing a federal offense for months and that now he had made us all accomplices. Which made us laugh even harder. Jason, the felon. He would not have had a good time in prison; he was kind of a pretty boy. We all promised not to turn him in and life resumed as normal, but with one less illegal activity occurring on a regular basis.
A few weeks later, Jared and Jason went back to Phoenix for the weekend to attend a Gin Blossoms concert. That very same weekend, I experienced a rather serious bout of Boredom. And it was apparently contagious.
Hi Lisa!
Lisa and I sat around our dorm room and alternated between staring at the ceiling, flipping through channels on the television, and thinking about maybe possibly almost studying. After awhile, I decided that I needed to do something, anything, other than those same three things over and over again.
So I picked up the phone. I dialed Jared and Jason’s room. As predicted, the answering machine picked up. And that’s when I said,
"This is Frieda Farkel, the postmaster of the NAU post office. I’m calling for Jason. We’ve received reports from a Scott Surley* that he has not been receiving his mail in the post office box that he shares with you. Upon watching the security tapes, we see that you, Jason, have been removing Scott’s mail from the box and placing it in the trash bin. I would like to point out to you that tampering with another person’s mail is a federal crime. We need you to get in touch with us as soon as possible so that we can quickly resolve this situation. Please call us at 555-5555. Thank you very much."
Then I went back to my grueling routine of staring at the ceiling, flipping through channels on the television, and thinking about maybe possibly almost studying. That was Saturday afternoon.
Sunday evening, Jared and Jason returned from Phoenix and listened to the messages on their answering machine.
Sunday evening, approximately 2 seconds after listening to their messages, I received a phone call from a very panicked Jared and a nearly hysterical Jason.
"Omigoshomigoshomigoshomigosh!!! Holy crap, Melissa! We are in soooo much trouble! Whatdowedowhatdowedowhatdowedo???? HOLY CRAP!!!" They even played the message back for me to listen to.
Now there are a few things I would like to point out about my phone call. Thing the first: I used the name Frieda Farkel. This is a name I have always used for prank calls ever since high school. Several of those prank calls from high school were placed with either Jared, Jason, or both sitting next to me and trying desperately to stifle their laughter. Thing the second: I made no attempt to disguise my voice in the message. I figured that since I was using a name they knew, there was no point in trying to hide my identity. Also, I believe I mentioned earlier that we talked on the phone together. This occurred at least once a day. So feasibly, they should have recognized my voice right away.
After more than five minutes of me laughing so hard that I couldn’t even form words, Lisa took the phone from me and told them to come over so that we could form a plan to keep them out of the big house. Because we’re good friends like that. By the time the front desk called up to our room to let us know we had male visitors and could we please come down to escort them up (we lived in an all girls dorm), our laughter had transcended sound. We had both reached the point where all you saw was two people holding their stomachs and shaking, mouths agape, but no audible noise emanating from them other than the occasional gasps for air. We went back to our room and two very confused guys sat there on the couch, looking more and more embarrassed as we explained what we had done.
Never before or since have I been able to completely pull of a prank like that. I simply had the thought, picked up the phone, and spoke the words. There was no planning, no conspiring, no expectations. In fact, by the time I went to bed Saturday night, I had already forgotten that I placed the call at all. And that they fell for it so completely…well…I’m still flabbergasted by it to this day.
Either I have a natural talent for comedy, or I’m an evil genius.
Guess which one is true.
MWAHAHAHAHA!
Humor-Blogs.com would never willingly admit to having commited any crimes, federal or otherwise!
You know what’s fun? Moving. Moving is fun. I LOVE the smell of new packing boxes. I LOVE the sound of the packing tape as you rip off a strip. I just plain LOVE packing! I LOVE going through every last single bit of detritus that we’ve collected over the years and trying to fit it all into the largest truck we can afford. In fact, I LOVE moving sooooo much, that I still haven’t completely unpacked from the last time we moved in the hopes that we will someday move again. 
