Preteen phone pranks evolving from canned to blue

[rbcp]

from this site:

You’re not going to believe what happened to me last week. Or — given the sordid state of our present-day standards of decency — you will believe it, which makes it all the worse.

Our phone rang, and I answered. On the line was what I took to be a very young girl, maybe 10 or 11 at the most. What she said I can’t repeat in a family newspaper, but believe me, it was disgustingly obscene. In the background, I could hear another youngster laughing. I shake my head every time I think back on it.

Probably it’s not so surprising when you consider what coarse fare passes for humor in the media that surround kids today. The many references to sexual and scatological functions and the sniggling double entendres that pop up even on prime-time television surely have an impact on impressionable young minds.


Prank calls, of course, are nothing new. But like so many other things, I guess, they’ve turned blue with the times.

When I was a preteen, we were not above playing games with strangers over the telephone ourselves, but in retrospect our little dialogues were as innocent as Snow White compared with today’s lewdness.

One of our favorite ploys was to dial a local drugstore and inquire sweetly, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” (That was the name of a popular pipe tobacco in the days when smoking was regarded as something less than a capital offense). “Yes,” a clerk would respond. To which, we would shout in triumphant glee, “Well, let him out!”

We considered that hilarious, the height of one-upmanship, and we’d double up with laughter at our witty tour de force.

Another hoax we employed was one in which we pretended to represent the phone company itself. “Hello,” one of us would say, “this is New England Tel and Tel. We believe there may be a problem on your line, and we’d like you to whistle loudly into the phone so we can test the transmission.” Back would come the whistle, to which we retorted, “That was excellent, thank you. We’ll send you a box of canary seed in the morning.”

There were other pranks. Some would pose as agents of the local power company and ask, “Can you tell us if your refrigerator is running at the present time?” Told that it was, the wise-guy punch line was always, “Then you’d better go catch it!” Another favorite exchange was this:

Caller: Is Mrs. Wall there?

Responder: No.

Caller: How about Mr. Wall?

Responder: You must have the wrong number. There aren’t any Walls here.

Caller: Then how does your roof stay up?

It seemed funny at the time. You had to be there, of course.

The call I got last week didn’t strike me as funny in any way. Sick, I’d call it, a sick sign of the times.

[Tachyon]

I think we need to find this person's number.

[rbcp]

I think it has very little to do with the times.  Friends and I made a few obscene prank phone calls when we were kids in the 80's.  He just never did them.  One of his examples reminded me of a prank we used to do, though. 

"Hi, this is Joe from Illinois Bell.  There's a guy up on a pole working on the phone lines on your block.  If your phone rings, please don't answer it or he could get an electric shock."

If they agreed, we would call them back and let the phone ring forever, laughing because they wouldn't pick it up and were forced to listen to a ringing phone that was probably driving them nuts.  Very few people were able to unplug their phones or turn off their ringers back then.  And if they finally picked up the phone, we would do our best impression of a lineman on a pole, screaming in agony because of the electric shock he was getting.