My Childhood Pastime : Prank Calling People and Telling Them They Won Cheese

You know what’s great? Being a kid and getting away with everything short of murder. Like “exploring” (i.e. sneaking into the Creepy Neighbor’s house to observe him), “scavenging” (i.e. getting up at 3 a.m. with your little brother to search for loose change around the house), and crank calling.

I loved crank calling when I was a kid. I was a crank calling fiend. If you were in the Yellow Pages, you were instantly at risk that my voice would greet you on the other line sometime around 3:45 and 5:15, post school and prior to Doctor Mom coming home from “squeezing puss” all day, as she would put it.

My crank calling was never random, either. I would specifically look for people with strange last names, as it was naturally assumed that these individuals were inherently weird anyway and deserved to be pranked.

“Erwin Bogstrupple”, for example. I’d definitely call that guy.

My biggest “pitch” during my crank calling career was coupled with the fact that I was (at age 10 or 11), learning how to do basic webdesign.

At this point I knew how to create simple webpage, reserve a domain, and upload the contents — however ridiculous — to the internet for the world to see. The possibilities of this skill were absolutely endless for my imagination. Just conceive of the innocent little deceptions I could create!

YouWonTHECHEESE.com!!! was only an inevitable matter of time.

December 12th, 1995. Get home / eat a pop tart / deceive Immigrant Baby Sitter / obtain cordless phone

Riiiiing. Riiiiing.

Long Incessantly Annoying Beep: “Hi! You’ve reached Weird @*($-ing Name Ashley Can’t Stand! I’m not dancing around the house right now, so puhhh-lease leave a message after the beep, BEEP! Just kidding, haha! And I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Or maybe not! Who knows! BEEP! Haha…”

I hated these people. These PEOPLE who leave MESSAGES on their machines that just go on and on and ramble for a seemingly interminable amount of time for absolutely no conceivable reason. WE GET IT. An ineludable beep at the end of your ridiculous vomiting of poorly strung syllables WILL AT SOME POINT OCCUR. Enough of dragging the process out more, already!

They deserved it, I would always mentally justify. They forced innocent people to listen to minutes upon minutes of idiotic banter. They way I saw it, they stole little pieces of people’s lives.

Riiiiing. RIIIIIING.

Long Incessantly Annoying Beep: “Hi! You’ve reached…”

Me [in a booming announcer's voice]: “CONGRATULATIONS, LUCY! Yoouuuuu’ve won THE CHEESE! Sixteen pounds of limburger, swiss, or the fine innards of GOAT?! WHO KNOWS! Go to www.youwonthecheese.com to claim your prize!”

I’d then hang up, insanely thrilled with myself, and go run around the block for a few hours to wear off the sugar high I’d inevitably gotten myself on.

I never knew what happened to the people who got these messages. I did, however, leave about 500 of them… and I had actually built a website that listed each name with a type of “Cheese Won” next to it.  Forty-five pounds of limburger was my favorite go-to prize.

The delivery within 4-6 weeks was a sham, though. I hope nobody was ever too disappointed.

Ah… the sweet — endless hours of childhood. This was almost as fun as that time I captured a four foot pelican off the end of my dock and kept it in the house for three days. Parents still don’t know about THAT one.

Time for a gigantic hunk of Brie.

– Ashley