Sunday, May 31, 2009

Freaky Telephone Calls: Part ONE!

First of all, if you haven't watched the short that Cins linked up below, do so, and now, because There Are Monsters is some unnerving stuff. According to the website for the film maker this is supposed to be a teaser short for a feature film: I sincerely hope this comes to pass.

Now, on to the meat of my post! I'm supposed to be reading for my second history "midterm", hilarious because a week after that is my final in the class and then I'm off for summer break. But I can only handle so much Aristotle in one sitting before I want to go back in time and punch him for being an elitist prick, so I'm taking a break, eating some chips and cheese with home made guacamole for dinner, and contemplating things that scare me.

Has anyone reading this ever had a frightening phone call, either from a prankster, a perv, or a wrong number? I have had all three, and even though long past, they still chill me a bit.

The first was your standard perv. The story is kind of funny now, simply because of how my approximately ten year old mind processed and filed what I heard. This was around 1987 or so; caller ID was pretty scarce and prank calling people was rampant (my personal favorite was to call someone and as fast as I could spit it out say "IknowwhoyouareIknowwhatyoudidIwantsomesex!" This I'm sure led to horror for my recipients, for what is more terrible than the breathless voice of an elementary school aged girl?! Usually people just laughed at me.). Our phone rang, and I answered it politely, as I had been drilled to do.

"Hello, **** residence, how many I help you?" A little receptionist in training was I! A strangely familiar voice pleasantly responded, asking to talk to my mother. "I'm sorry, she's not here right now. Can I take a message?" Instead of responding to that, she asked my name. I told her it was Stacy. This voice was driving me slightly crazy; I recognized it, I knew I did, but couldn't place who it was. To my memory, some twenty years later, it sounded like Whoopie Goldberg. Not even kidding here.

She then asked me if I was ticklish. I had been happy to talk to her up til this point; so far she had just been a friendly person on the line. "Who is this?" I asked her. "You know who this is," was all I got in response. "No, really, who is this? So I can tell Mom to call you back." "Where are you ticklish, Stacy?" she said in reply.

"Who is this?" I was still polite-- I got in trouble if my dad caught me being snotty on the phone. I was getting really uneasy though, and was too young to realize this as an internal red flag. "Are you ticklish on your chest? Are your nipples ticklish?" The red flag was now a klaxon in my head screaming "ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!" I really should have told her to go fuck herself and damned the consequences. She was obviously going to anyway. Instead I start repeating myself over and over and over, trying to irritate her name out of her. "Who is this? Who are you? What's you name? Who is this?" etc. Hey, it worked with my younger and older brothers. She ignored me and kept asking increasingly more personal questions: "Are you ticklish on your legs? What about between your legs? Are you ticklish there? Do you want me to tickle you there?" Now I'd just turn the tables and be as crude as humanly possible right back, but I was young and untried, and just continued with my Campaign to Irritate.

My dad came in at this point, wanting to know what all the ruckus was. I told him, over her increasingly more pervy questions about my ticklish places. He told me to hang up, as it was an obscene phone call, my very first one involving sex. Sure, I'd had kids my age call up and scream curse words and then hang up; heck, I'd done it myself more than once. But not from an adult, asking such intrusive questions. I slammed the phone down, and we tried to puzzle out if it was indeed someone we knew, or if it was just a familiar sounding voice. I told them that she sounded like Whoopie Goldberg, got a strange look in reply, and that was the end of it really, save for the addition of the whistle. Afterward my dad got a really strong whistle from Base, and we were instructed to use it on perverts, something I looked forward to with glee. Whoopie never called back, sadly, and I never did figure out why that voice sounded familiar. I'd think about it occasionally, usually long after I was in bed, and got creeped out. I was half afraid she would climb up to the second floor where I slept, to get me.

Now I'm just grossed out by someone who gets thrills off of scaring little girls, and befuddled, because let's admit it: that's pretty fucking weird.

For the record: yes, I am ticklish. But only me and my hairdresser know for sure where.

Please, share your freaky phone calls, heavy breathers, weird text messages, what have you! I'd love to hear them! Unless it's Whoopie. Than it's not funny anymore!

3 comments:

Cins said...

I really think that a good chunk of my brain blocks things out. Because whenever you ask a question like this i can't think of a damn thing. So either I'm blocking thoughts or I'm just insanely vanilla.
The only thing that comes close is the phone calls I got at work. I answered one time and a SWEAR to god someone was doing The Grudge noise over the phone. I completely slammed the phone down on the hook in front of a customer in total terror. The other was at work. I picked it up and answered like usual.
No reply.
In the background was what sounded like Cher music.
I look at the screen on my phone and noticed the number read:
666-0666
Satan Called Me.
He likes the musical stylings of Cher.

Stac said...

Cins: I do not know which of these frightens me more. Honestly.

Nojh said...

I've never really had any freaky experiences with the phone. I hardly ever answered the phone as it was, and answering machines became common place by the time I was in school so I was instructed to usually let it go to the machine rather than answer. I was also never one of those kids who prank called and I never got any either.