refrigerator autographs

It was a Friday afternoon, in the 4th grade.

That dreaded Math test was over, along with those awful multiplication tables that I’d practiced time and time again. The vintage melody of “Don’t worry… Be Happy” filtered in through the crackly announcements box on the classroom intercom while we waited for that final bell to ring.

In retrospect, I think this was to bring comfort to those of us who were not so great at fill-in-the-blank here {Math}… and had general angst about sharing their weekly grades on the way home with their parents. Well played, Principal’s office. Well played.

But that could wait, because I was going home with Kimberly.

And we were having a sleepover.

I’d packed my Going to Grandma’s suitcase.

But I’d also packed my Caboodle because I was in that in-between phase where I almost thought I was too cool for my Going to Grandma’s suitcase. Meme had given it to me for Christmas, and she was the best thing ever so I used it… Even though I wasn’t going to Grandma’s, the non-irony was not lost on me. So I also had my caboodle to accompany me, with my stash of Malibu Musk, star twins lipgloss, crimper, and my Wilson Phillips tape. I know. Classic case of a child on the brink of trying to be cool older.

It was the age of glitter batons, big bows and New Kids on The Block. With a side of Keds. Don’t forget the Keds.

Kimberly had a boom box. And a trampoline.

And most importantly? Kimberly had a phone.

In. Her. Room.

A pink phone that sat in the corner, just begging to be used.

But also in my suitcase? Was my Hello Kitty Autograph book.

I’d picked it out on a shopping trip with my parents. My friend Shae was an only child and so she always had all the latest and greatest Hello Kitty stuff. I think she’d brought one to school and therefore, I needed one too. Probably as my reward for not punching my little brother in the face or something, my parents humored me. I found it in the store, right beside the cool tape and pink glittery staplers and purple translucent whistles with overly happy character animals living in oblivion of bad math grades. That plastic smelled so good. If I could live in the Hello Kitty store at the mall, I would. My parents could just leave me there behind the big mall grate that lowered when they closed the store at night, and I would camp out amongst those amazingly compartmentalized crayon boxes and squeaky, chemically plastic.

It had all my friends’ names and numbers in there: Jan Cook – the girl who rode the bus with me and lived in my neighborhood. She kissed the boy who once lived in our house, in my then room. I mean, rad. Jan knew how to live on the edge because that boy was cute. I would stand in my room and stare at the window. Right where she said it happened. Kissing a boy was gross and cool all at the same time.

And Jennifer, my best friend who lived in a cul-de-sac around the corner… a bike ride away. Not to be confused with the other Jennifer who lived a few houses down from me who had like fifty brothers and sisters who was also a good friend, but not my best friend. And Kirk. That cute boy in the other class across the hall. He had a little bit of a mullet, but it was so the style back then. He was my boyfriend and I had his number. Which basically meant we chased each other on the playground. But I would never call him. That was all for show. I mean, I was a girl. And girls didn’t call boys, even thought he wanted me to. Duh.

But he’d signed it anyway. Right after he slipped me a dirty note with words he’d heard in a movie that I ripped up and promptly threw away because I didn’t even know what they meant, but I did know they were bad and that my dad would call Kirk’s mom and it would not be pretty. So destroy the evidence, I must. Kirk made me feel weird, so I dumped him right after that. The very next day he was holding hands with the other other Jennifer beside the monkey bars. Which was fine because I’d already moved on to Josh. We traded Micro Machines and erasers and he was funny.

But back to the important stuff: what exactly did we plan to do with this autograph book? Call people, of course.

Prank call them.

So it was after dinner that we escaped to Kimberly’s room upstairs, and broke it out.

With the clanging of dishes and oblivious adult voices downstairs, I opened up my autograph book, and we started going down the line. Asking for friends when they picked up. Chickening out and hanging up because we were pretty sure they’d tell on us. It was when we started making up numbers, that it got fun.

We would make up a number, and then write it down. If someone picked up, we would call them back later. It was a solid, untraceable plan. So we used our little system, and wrote them down in my book, which lay open beside her pink phone where we were huddled on the other side of her bed.

In retrospect, we were total idiots and I can’t imagine my child doing this. But hey… Fast Times at Valley Elementary.

We called one lady and pretended we were the phone company. All the while thinking she believed us, we got her to answer questions that were important to our survey. And then we let her go. A few minutes later, even though we said we would wait, we called her back, laughed and slammed the phone back on the receiver. No one ever said this was rational.

And the third time, Kimberly held the phone. I waited on the floor, clutching my pillow, giggling uncontrollably into my fingers.

“Um,” Kimberly sputtered to the same lady who still sat on the other end of our ill-fated phone call, “Is your refrigerator running?” I was now convulsing into my pillow. We were so funny.

We were so original.

But there was a delay, and then I looked up, when I could hear a muffled response on the other end, and with each word, Kimberly’s already-bulging eyes grew wider.

Her tone was suddenly quite serious.

“Yes ma’am.” she said. “Yes. Yes ma’am. I’m sorry. We won’t call you again.” And with that, the phone was returned to it’s cradle with an ominously dull clang from the bell inside.

“She said that our call has been traced, and she’s going to call my parents. And tell them what we did!” Kimberly squeaked as I looked at her with wide eyes of my own.

We both sat there, frozen. Waiting on the phone to ring again. I thought my heart may just beat out of my chest, because we were busted. And if we didn’t want to be, we both knew what had to be done: We would answer it quickly and then hang up. We would do it all night, if we had to. But our plan faded when we thought through the obvious: she would just call back. This lady had been given the all powerful knowledge of our number, and could reach Kimberly’s parents at any moment.

We would have to sit here until she called. Waiting.

We knew how this story would end – Kimberly’s phone would be taken away. She would never be able to have anyone over again. It was basically all my fault.

My recently digested Pizza Hut rose into my throat in a wave of tear-laden guilt, as we came off our phone junkie adrenaline high. We considered all the options.

And so wait we did. And panic we did. And we went through all the scenarios for what felt like an hour, but probably added up to about a ten minute conversation, until we had a real plan.

Leaving the phone off the hook and outright lying all seemed like viable options, but oh the guilt!

Oh the fear!

Instead, we went for what made perfect sense in the moment: Destroy all evidence.

So destroy all evidence, we did.

I promptly went through my autograph book, and ripped out the pages of made up numbers. Sorry Jan Cook. Sorry Jennifer and the other Jennifer. The numbers all had to go. At least the guilty ones. No one could trace it back to us. Just in case all the prank called victims came together for a secret meeting, and showed up with torches at Kimberly’s front door. We had to eliminate the guilt. Purge it from the house.

As if we thought her parents could detect the numbers, and scrubbing ourselves of them made us free. We must destroy the evidence. All of the evidence.

We tried scribbling them out but we knew we must leave no trace. So we removed them, ripped them up and… wait for it… stupid move no. 2:

Promptly flushed the pages down the toilet.

Or at least attempted to, because we were feeling pretty relieved, and I think it worked until about page five.

Around page five was when the tank began to back up and we were stuck there, in the bathroom. Absolutely frozen in horror at the fact that the toilet was filling up quickly, to the brim.

The water now full of pink, ripped up paper with remnants of numbers. Our guilt mocking us in haphazard swirls from the stagnant water. I think we kicked it… willing it to unstop itself.

And then karma at it’s finest: Because at that very same moment, the phone rang. And we couldn’t get to it fast enough, because her bathroom was at least twelve feet away from that phone. And as we began to dive for it, fumbling right over the bed onto the other side of the room, we heard her mom pick up downstairs.

The malibu musk crimped hairathon with a NKOTB sing along, would have to wait. I was totally going to lose my pizza in a guilt surge.

So we panicked, ran for her bed, and promptly turned out the lights. If that lady was ratting us out downstairs, they wouldn’t take Kimberly’s phone away if we were asleep. At least her parents would have the whole night to calm down, we rationed.

I mean, at this rate… maybe I wouldn’t even get into trouble! Good luck, Kimberly.

It was a few minutes later that when there was a knock on the door, and it squeaked open into her dark room. A tiny sliver of light shining on our faces. It was her mom.

“Are you girls going to bed?” We yawned and pretended to rub our eyes. As if disturbed from a deep slumber.

“It’s only 8:00,” she said, curiously.

Oops. In our guilt-stricken panic, we hadn’t really thought any of this through.

“Yeah, we’re really tired,” Kimberly yawned, both of us bracing ourselves. Then, “Who called?” we added, casually.

Casual was totally our thing.

It was a Business call for her dad.

We turned the lights on, after realizing that an 8:00 bedtime looked suspicious, but sat bracing ourselves for disaster the rest of the night.

And we eventually fell asleep beside the phone. We didn’t stop waiting for that phone call.

We absolutely, undeniably got what we deserved.

That night, I learned three things:

1. I would never prank call anyone ever again.

Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye!

Just kidding. We were at it again a few weeks later, but always with the remaining fear that she would call us to check up on things. She was out there. Like a funsucker housewife, just waiting. Armed with the power of Kimberly’s number. And she would ruin our lives. Just like she already ruined our slumber party. We were only a number away. She was lying in wait for the perfect moment. We just knew it.

2. Adults are good at bluffing.

And children are super gullible. This is because they’re smarter. But it worked. Better than telling on us ever could. We were tortured with the simple possibility.

In retrospect, it was fantastic. If only she knew how badly she messed with us that night. I’m pretty sure I lost a couple night’s sleep over it, and jumped out of my skin every time my own phone rang once I was at home. Because all the torch-bearing angry mob of prank called people were coming for us. And at the very least, it was Kimberly’s parents, calling to tell my parents what I’d done.

I’m saving it for later.

3. It’s never a good idea to flush anything other than toilet paper down the toilet.

I’m not sure I was invited back over again for a slumber party after that, because my nice Hello Kitty Autograph Book suffered an untimely death all in the name of overreactive fear.

That, and the suspicious floating pink paper in the clogged toilet was discovered the very next day.

________

My mom brought this fun stash from their home, and in it was a treasure trove of childhood memories. I just thought I’d share some of my faves. In it, was my autograph book and I remembered that fateful night.

I promptly handed it to Emerson, who shares my childhood love for Hello Kitty. This was with my old barbies, and troll dolls which “freaked her out”. When I tried to find it a few months later, I even searched the house the other day so I could photograph it for this little gem of a story.

I’m pretty sure the curse of the prank called housewife lives on. Because true to childhood, it’s disappeared amongst all the pink again, as did some of my friends in the middle school shuffle, about a year later. The metaphor is also not lost on me.

I’ll stumble across it again, probably while we’re moving.

And I must confess… I kind of want to know what happened to Kirk.

And his Mullet.