Barbie Gets Punk'd

As I was visiting with Sunny Teacher and her beautiful new baby boy Saturday evening, I received the following text message: HEARD THE ALIENS JUST LANDED. The natural response to this was to text back: Where? Unfortunately, my text didn’t go through. Apparently 010-010-1100 is a bogus number. Who would have thought? In the midst of my failure to respond, I received a second text message: IM IN ALBETRAZ. SAVE ME. In search of somebody to blame, I message the most likely culprit: Shanna.

Me: Did you give out my number?
Shanna: No. Why?
Shanna: Who would I give your number to?
Me: Somebody is sending me funny text messages
Shanna: Like what?
Me: Like I was going to send The Tall One

You see, I had decided earlier that day that it would be cute of me to send our friend, The Tall One, creepy, anonymous text messages. As I didn’t actually have The Tall One’s number, I messaged Shanna for it. Given that I didn’t have The Tall One’s number, I assumed that she didn’t have mine. In spite of my efforts, I failed to get passed the first hurdle on this splendid idea because I broke the first rule of prank texting: Don’t answer the phone when they call you! The Tall One called me almost immediately after the first message (which was actually pretty tame; I was planning on gradually working towards creepy). I saw her number on the display and thought that she was calling me because it turned out that she had my number and was confused as to what I was going on about. As it turns out, she didn’t actually have my number until she called me, I answered, and she deduced that this was my number. Sigh. I came up with a half-assed cover story as to why I was messaging her about the bus and left it at that. Somehow, “I thought it would be funny to anonymously text message you and then answer when you call” didn’t seem like it was something that worth boasting about.

In the meantime, I had more important things to concern myself with than past failures. The barrage of text messages continued, with each subsequent message seemingly trying to out-ridiculous the previous. They proceeded as follows:

Culprit: PSCHO YO!
Culprit: WHERES MY SANDWICH?
Culprit: DOGS ONLY SEE IN BLACK AND WHITE. SOME WATCH TV BUT ALL GO TO HEAVEN.
Culprit: KNOCK KNOCK. WHO IS THERE? DETECTIVE BARBIE!
Culprit: I ONCE HAD A HAMSTER NAMED SPAGHETTI MEATBALLS. HE WAS EATEN BY A CAT. SAD FACE.

The hamster message was the last of the evening. This is likely because the culprit was unable to come up with something more ridiculous with which to top it.

While I was suspicious of Shanna still, when I received the “Pscho (sic) yo” message, I decided that the culprit may well be The Golden Drunk. The Golden Drunk, myself, and others have an inside joke which revolves around spelling psycho without the “y”. If it’s a slow week, I may share it sometime. I decided to send The Golden Drunk a random text message in return to see how she’d respond. Her failure to respond entirely confirmed my suspicion that it was her. I felt quite pleased with myself for having solved the mystery.

Despite having already called The Golden Drunk out, her random text messaging continued throughout Sunday, as I receive three more messages:

Culprit: JACOB LIKES MAGIC AND WATER. NOT INTO AJUSHI PANTS THOUGH.
Culprit: METAL MEANS POTATO
Cultrip: BOOTS WITH THE FUR.

Highly amused by The Golden Drunk’s efforts to play dumb and keep the prank up, I discuss the matter with Shanna over dinner on Sunday night. I conclude that The Golden Drunk probably didn’t come up with all of those fabulous messages by herself and is probably in cohorts with her boyfriend. Shanna agrees with me on the matter. I went home that night feeling quite pleased with myself for having created a seamless conclusion to this matter. I was so confident in myself that I sent The Golden Drunk another random text message and a facebook message in reference to this ordeal. I wanted her to know that 1) I thought she was very clever and 2) she really should share with me how to message people from numbers like 010-010-1100. I was really hoping she would share her secret with me so that I could later use this trick on The Tall One.

By Monday evening, the random text messages had subsided. I was somewhat saddened by the sudden lack of attention, but concluded that The Golden Drunk must have bored of the idea soon after I advised her that the gig was up. Shanna and I were reiterating the entire story to The April, when Shanna decides to drop the following on me:

Shanna: Those messages have been coming from The Tall One
Me: Er… what?
Shanna: I explained to her why you randomly messaged her about the bus on Saturday, and she decided that she wanted to get even
Me: Shut up.
Shanna: How could you NOT have realized it was The Tall One?!
Me: I was so sure it was The Golden Drunk! This can’t be right.
Shanna: I personally wrote several of those messages!
Me: You mean the ones that you laughed at on the subway with me and declared as genius?!
Shanna: Yes, those ones.
Me: It’s terribly self centred and narcissistic to admire your own work in that manner.. how did I not think of this first?

In hindsight, it was fairly apparent the entire time that it was The Tall One behind this. Obviously Shanna was going to advise her of my original intentions to pull a similar prank on her, and the messages only started coming a few hours later when I knew the two of them were hanging out together. Furthermore, Shanna is one of about half a dozen people that would know to drop the “pscho (sic) yo!” line on me. Yet, in spite of the obvious, I spent the entire weekend with only a mild suspicion of Shanna, not a second though of The Tall One, discussing at length how this was clearly the work of The Golden Drunk. And the entire time, Shanna was reporting all of this back to The Tall One so that they could carry on such conversations as:

Shanna: She is blaming the entire thing on another friend of hers.
Shanna and The Tall One: Muhahaha!
The Tall One: Really? But… how? Could it be any more obvious?
Shanna: She has special problems.
The Tall One: She’s not actually that stupid.. is she?
Shanna: All signs point to yes.

In conclusion:

Shanna and The Tall One: 27
Big White Barbie: 0

I was completely duped.

I haven’t yet decided what my revenge will be. I admit that it will be difficult to match them on this. They took my utter failure of an idea and turned it around on me. While they get no points for creativity, their follow through was fantastic. Apparently I have about as much game with practical jokes as I do with the opposite sex. Back to the drawing board for me.