The Prank

I live for a good laugh, mostly at someone elses expense. I'd like to think I can laugh at myself, but realistically that may not be as true as I'd like to think. I am always in search for a good zinger, a great prank that will really get somebody without getting me. I heard a great prank on the radio. It had the three important elements of a great prank; required minimal effort, it would definitely work, and there was little chance of getting caught. I decided to make a few adjustments to the actual prank to make it work for me and after talking with a few other people I found my accomplice and victim.

My accomplice was none other than my co-worker Stephanie Doyle, the victim her roommate Spilly Sandra. I have met Sandra once, heard about her a lot, and knew just enough about her to get this to work, or so I hoped.

The plan was simple, Steph would change the phone number of a guy in her ward's number to mine. Then I would text and my name in this case would be Jake 2(apparently out of the two Jakes he was 2nd place). As Jake 2 I was going to try to get Sandra to become interested in me. Of note: why this works well and the reason I knew it would work is that no one ever checks the number, they just see the name coming in and that's it. In fact the way contact lists work nowadays even if she had checked the number she probably wouldn't have known it was wrong anyhow. There really is little point in memorizing numbers anymore, we just leave that to the phones.

One other note I told Janalynn about all this so that if she ever picked up my phone and checked the texts and saw all the flirting she would know what was going on. I didn't want this prank to backfire on me. Funny thing was yesterday when I told Kevin (bro in law) about all this his first question was, "Did you tell Janalynn first?"

Sandra a is nurse and works the late shift, which actually was a good and bad thing. The good was it was highly unlikely that she would piece everything together while at work. Janalynn works the night shift on Fridays so I was home with the kids and could easily do all this. The bad was that since she was at work she could only check her phone periodically; I mean she does get paid to check on the well being of others. This meant there was never really a time when we went back and forth with a flurry of messages. It was more like one text every 30min to an hour. This really made things tough.

Here's what happened. At about 6:15 I sent my first text asking what she was doing, her reply was "sadly i'm on my way to work" 6:22 I asked if she liked working late her reply, "we have a lot of fun at night, the price you pay for the lack of sleep and sanity." My counter was, "well that explains a lot." Her reply, "Explains why i'm so fun or why I am sometimes insane?" I came back with "Why both of course;) What did you think of the office?

It was now 7:00 and things were going well. We discussed the recent episode of the Office for the next hour and then I sent this text. But let me give some background first. Jim and Michael are driving from Scranton Pennsylvania to New York, upon leaving Penn. Michael blows two kisses. The exchange goes as follows and my text: "Two kisses?" "One for Jan and one for me." Sandra responded with, "I'm not kissing Jan." So I countered with "Why not?" Her reply "Only cute boys." At this point I knew I needed a good one and I thought up what I consider to be a pretty good one, "Hey, I resemble that."

Note: One good thing about texting is that I could really think about my responses before actually doing it. I was able to consider all the possibilities before acutally doing it, making this work even better.

Her response was "Says who? :)"
This was where I could finally do it. "I'm hoping you"
I knew this was a zinger, it was fun but at the same time I was getting somewhere, or so I thought.
Not long after I received a text from Steph saying that Sandra thought it was funny and that I was just playing around. Well it was true but I realized it wasn't quite going the way I had hoped. But I got confused at this point. Did she mean Jake 2 was funny or me. The hard thing about being someone else is are they reacting to you or the person you are being. This is the major flaw with texting, way too many details are left out.

Steph clarified and then added that the funny thing about all this was is that Sandra had spoken to Jake 2 before I texted. I was confused again, did she mean the last text I had sent or the first text. Things were unraveling quickly. "The first text" I was still waiting for Sandra to reply and then I waited, waited, and finally after an hour I sent "Sandra?" I was worried the whole thing was lost. A few minutes later I received, "Sorry crazy busy at work! by the way who are you i just talked to ben(jakes bro) and i don't think you are his bro"

This lead to may favorite text of the whole night. In utter horror that the whole gig was up I sent this text to Steph, "DAMAGE CONTROL NEED HELP" I then forwarded the last text from Sandra only to have Steph reply, "Oh crap"

At this point I realized that even if I got myself out of this jam it was pretty much over and wouldn't have the desired effect. The fact that Sandra didn't think I was Jake 2 really signaled an end to the fun. I came back with "Of course it is me" and knowing she had watched a new show called Carpoolers asked her about it. This calmed things down, but it was getting late and in reality I couldn't go back to the flirty thing. I finally said goodnight and that was that.

In the morning I talked to Steph to see what happened she said that Sandra knew something was up and then since Steph has no poker face, accused her of being involved. This led to less of a poker face and an actual admittance of guilt. It was done. Sandra thought it was hilarious and everyone was happy. And luckily I could just go about being me, I didn't have to be Jake 2 anymore.

Final Analysis: Texting is actually harder work than it looks, but does allow for the time to write your best response. However, the major problem is it leaves way too many details out and you can definitely misread intent.
I did get a pic sent to me last night of Sandra and Jake 2. Jake knows as well and thought it was funny. Alas, a good prank that brought everyone together. BTW, I do know that one day I will get my comeuppance for all this, it is coming.