I don’t recall much about Julie’s “life” or “personality,” other than she went to a different school and met the boy (we’ll call him Jeff) at some sort of sporting event he was in. That’s how we got the idea: I would call a guy from Amy’s school, make up a name, pretend we had met, and get him to talk.įor the first call, I assumed the fake identity Julie Moore. (I would die if I had to hear what that sounded like.) A surprising number of them would stay on the line, readily divulging personal info and being generally unguarded. We made up names and personas and were flirty.
We would call the children’s line, and if a boy answered we’d just start talking to him.
She lived in a somewhat bigger, richer city - a place where you could page through the phonebook and find a “children’s line” listed under the family’s main number. Usually the calls were harmless, amazingly hilarious fun. I said, “Mom?” and she said, “Lisa, is that you?” and I said, “Yeaaah *sniff sniff,*” and she said, “What’s wrong honey?” and I said, “Can you come get me?” and she said, “Are you at the school?” and I said, “Yes, please come get me,” and she said, “I’M ON MY WAY.” I wanted to call back and tell her it was just a prank, but I was too scared. I did this once, and when a woman answered I pretended to be crying. Other times we’d just wing it and dial random numbers. We repeatedly called a man named Fred Krueger and said awesome lines like, “Come to Freddy!” in a raspy voice. We’d page through the phonebook in my town and find interesting names.
I remember making most of them with my cousin Amy. When you were nuts from playing Super Mario too many times, what was there left to do but listen to GNR on the radio and apply Lee Press-on Nails? And as the night wore on what was there left to do but break off those fake nails dialing one stranger’s telephone number after another? In the late ’80s you had an untraceable landline (simply called “a phone”), cable TV, a VCR, and maybe Nintendo. There was no internet, no cell phones, no chat, no iPods - even CDs were a couple years out for most people. When I was in seventh grade, caller ID didn’t exist.
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