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Prank Calling: Good Parents… and Me

Jane came home from school yesterday, did her homework and then said, “Gimme the phone! All the girls are going to prank call all the boys!”

She disappeared upstairs, phone list and telephone in hand. I flipped a switch* and listened at she called one of the boys:

Hello this is your father. Tell your mother that I just sold my script to Sony.

And then she giggled and hung up, maybe even in that order. There were two or three more phone calls, and a few moments thereafter there were some calls made to my home.

It was funny.

So I sent this email to the class.

fireshot-capture-1-gmail-dear-4th-grade-parents-onlineauthorgmail_com-mail_google_com_mail_inbox_11fb0610d60b7fdd

I got the predictable results.

Thank you for the chuckle.

They’re so cute.

Your daughter called my house and WTF with the accent?

And then there were the emails I didn’t expect. They all started with “Was it my child?” and “We’d like to teach him/her boundaries.”

OhMyGawd

Boundaries? Shoot! I completely forgot that not everyone simply lives for April Fools Day. Some of these parents have real and actual jobs. They need their phones so that places like Sony can call. Not everyone thinks a prank call is an art form.

D’oh!

Here’s the really interesting part. They aren’t crazy, stodgy or weird. They’re parents that I’d probably go to for advice. They are parents with older children, or who work in academic settings. They’re good parents, parents with foresight. I can’t dismiss them as stupid, old, or humorless; because I know them, and they’re the kind of parent I’d like to be.

I wonder how they’d feel about iFart?

*Yes, I regularly use the intercom system to eavesdrop, tell Jane and you’re dead meat.

7 thoughts on “Prank Calling: Good Parents… and Me”

  1. YOU know how dangerous it is to admit secrets on the web! Anybody resourceful enough to find a “Jane Gottlieb” or just people 10 yrs old on Facebook who live near you, have the same last name.. etc.. will spill your beans!

    Hopefully she’s not on facebook. That’s like, danger waiting to happen.

    Amusing scenario, Jess. :3

  2. This is hilarious.

    And I have to agree with SoreThumb, facebook and all that is not necessarily safe. My husband and are currently getting a ton of requests from people in our neighborhood to teach them how to lock their kids out of those websites (my husband works Network Admin). This is after our next door neighbor had us lock out her 12 year old daughter who was causing trouble doing pranks on her classmates. Oh my poor kids, they are either going to be complete geeks able to hack through security measures or they are going to submitted to some of the tightness network restrictions my husband can think to put in place.

    I love my geeky husband.

  3. I guess it would depend on who they are calling. Friends? Sure. Business? Probably not. But I don’t have this problem and my boys won’t even talk on the phone, their choice not mine.

    BTW, I taught my son how to really burp.

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