I've Been Watching You

My friend Teresa commented that I should write about “the Barbie phone” and a few of you were curious to know the story behind that. About ten years ago Santa brought my oldest daughter a really cool phone for her room. It was actually called a “Clueless Hands Free” phone and is pictured above. It had this really cool voice changing option. You could talk normal or change it to four or five other choices. They ranged from making your voice sound like a “Chipmunk” cartoon character to that scary one that was featured in Mel Gibson’s movie, Ransom, where his son was kidnapped and he was getting those calls from the kidnapper using that exact voice. When we first tested the scary voice on each other it actually gave me chills.

I’m never one to pass up a good prank or not love acting like a kid again, so it didn’t take me long to pull out the old address book and start dialing up almost everyone we knew. (Well, those who could take a joke and didn’t have a heart condition) I’d call using the scary voice saying I was watching them or something along those lines. Yes, I know, that’s not very nice but let me tell you we had a blast doing it and almost died from laughing a few times. One of us would talk and the other would pick up the other phone and listen to the call, trying not to laugh out loud.

Of course caller ID was a bit of a deterrent but I was pretty clever and up to speed on some ways around it, such as “call block” which would not reveal the number you were calling from. Of course there were some people who had their phones set up not to accept blocked calls so there were a few foiled attempts, but most of the time we (the husband and me acting like two 10 year-olds) got through and totally scared the crap out of some of our friends and family. I know I really should be ashamed. Snort, snicker, bahahaha!

The absolute best one we pulled off actually lasted for several days. It was played on an old friend from our Military days. I had called the wife using the scary voice and then eventually told her what was going on. She wanted me to play a prank on her husband and for several days would call me with details of what they’d done that particular day, where’d they’d been and more or less what to say. I would call and say stuff like I've been watching you, I saw you at the beach with your family riding four wheelers, and I saw you do this or that. I never said I was going to kidnap anyone or really gave a reason to him for the call, other than just informing him in that scary voice that someone was watching him. I would find out from his wife what his reaction was in between the phone calls and learned that he was really tripping out about the calls. He even put the movie Ransom in the VCR to show his dad and wife so they could hear exactly how the caller sounded. If you're wondering if I felt bad about this, the answer is yes, in between my bouts of laughter I had small waves of guilt. I can't recall exactly how long we let him suffer or how many calls I made, but I'd say it was over a period of a several days before his wife finally told him the truth. Luckily, he took it well and we’re both still alive.

Teresa refreshed my memory yesterday that the trick I'd played on her was telling her that I'd seen her out at a club and thought she was hot or something along those lines, more or less posing as a psycho stalker/secret admirer. That was back when she was in the prime of her partying days so I’m sure I went with that line thinking it was believable since she went out a lot at the time. I can’t remember all of the calls we made or exactly what was said but I do know it was funny at the time. As a matter of fact, I’m now on a mission now to find that phone. I know I kept it and it’s in some closet in this house. I’ve made some new friends over the past ten years and am always looking for cheap entertainment!