# Prank Phone Answer

[Note: This post was written back in March. I don't know why I never published it. Probably too much going on. But it's here, I'm here, you're here, so there you go. --Liam]

When I was a kid, I did a little bit of prank calling. You know, nothing too bad. The standard “is your fridge running” kind of jokes. It was the 80s, or maybe the very early 90s. Call display wasn’t really widely available, or maybe it didn’t exist yet, and these were the things we did for kicks.

But I don’t want to talk about making prank phone calls. I want to talk about the one time I prank-answered the phone.

I’m sure I was a teenager, and I’m sure I was not a grown-up. I made bad decisions as a grown-up, but I’d learned my lessons about playing around on the phone by then.

The phone rang. As you did back in the day before call display and voicemail, I answered it. The caller asked for some ridiculous name. I was sure it was a prank. Something like Douglas Zane, which sounded fake to teen-aged me. So, I went along with it. Just to see where it went.

“This is Douglas Zane,” I said, sure the caller would hang up or say something about wiping my butt. Instead, what I got was an earnest request for this kid -- probably somewhere around my age, but as I was a kid, the description works -- asking for a chance to try out for Douglas Zane’s hockey team.

“So can I come by tomorrow?” Uhhh... fuck.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Tomorrow sounds fine.” Shit shit shit.

We ended the conversation pretty quickly after that, he having gotten what he wanted, me with my brain going a million miles a minute.

Phone book. Douglas Zane.

Well, D Zane, with a number that had two digits transposed from ours. Ugh.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I’m calling for (I will admit, I can’t remember the young hockey player’s name, but it made a lot more sense for me to be representing him rather than pretending to be him, because that meant I didn’t have to answer a lot of questions.) [player_name]. He’s interested in trying out for your team and was wondering if he could come to practice tomorrow.”

“Yeah, for sure. Looking forward to it.”

Again, there wasn’t any small talk, me having gotten what I wanted, and him, presumably, not so interested to talk to young hockey player’s unpaid representative.

I have no idea how teenaged me would have dealt with a “no, we’re not interested” type of answer. The hockey player was coming tomorrow, whether Zane wanted it or not. I know how I would handle it now, full disclosure, a shake of the head. I would hope that Zane wouldn’t take it out on the young player and move on with my life. I want to say that teenaged me would have had the guts to own up to his malfeasance, but I can’t honestly say.