PlazaJen: Passion Knit

Given how many pranks I've played in my life - too many to count - I've always thought today would have been a fitting birthday for me. In fact, it's a blog bud's, Becky's, so pop over & say Happy Day in her comments if you have the chance.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite pranks.

I was dating this guy waaaay back when I lived in Minneapolis. He started buying all this high-end gym-quality equipment. And put it in the living room. It was a good look, if you were going for a gym-theme in the home. She says sarcastically. One day we were looking at it, and I was snorting about how homey it was, and he said, "I wish there was something I could buy to put it on that I could move it all into the corner out of the way."

Oh, yes. See, to a prankster, expressing a wish is like giving me a key. To the kingdom! So the next week, I wrote this little script, and had a guy at work call & leave it on his answering machine. It went something like this: "Hi, this is Tom from USA Gym, and we were going through our records & saw you'd recently purchased several large pieces of equipment. We wanted to tell you about this great new item we've just gotten in, called 'Space Savers'. Space Savers are made of high-grade steel & raise your equipment 4" to give you room on the floor, where you need it most. They're sold in sets of four, and they're $69.99. Give us a call if you're interested."

Hee hee hee. So I wait, until I know he's gotten home, give him 20 minutes, and then call. "Hi! How are you?" Blah blah blah. He doesn't say anything. I finally said, "So, did you get any interesting messages today?" "Nope." Silence. "Nothing about say, some gym equipment?" "Uh, yeah, actually." Big pause.

OK, this is when it all slid way the hell out of control. Turns out, he BARELY listened to the details of the message, but heard the magic words "Space Savers" and immediately called USA Gym. Where he eventually got sent to the manager, who got out his catalog to start trying to find these things. ("They're called WHAT? Space Savers? I've never heard of them.") As he was paging through it, he asked who had called & left the message. "Tom." "Well, what the hell is Tom doing calling you? He drives the truck! He's not allowed to be selling things on the side to customers!" Oh shit. "What were they called? Space Savers? I'm going to have to call you back."

Hi, now I'm getting poor schlump Tom fired from his job for selling FOUR INCH CASTERS on the side. I said, "Didn't you LISTEN? They only raise the equipment UP four INCHES! They don't do you any good! And they don't exist!"

"I gotta call this guy back before he fires Tom. I'll call you later."

Yeah, it's not really surprising that relationship was not destined to last. But he did laugh about it, and Tom didn't get fired.

If that's not enough to make you worried about hanging out with me, go ahead & read the one I posted , last year.