Wednesday, May 11, 2016

“Prank Call” Caller ID Designation

When I was a kid, there was this great phenomenon known as prank calls. That was when someone called your home phone, and they’d say something silly, or something rude, or they’d ask you a dumb, insulting question, or maybe they’d just breathe hard on the line in a suggestive or threatening manner. P{rank calls were the bane of many parents and adults in general, but for us kids back then, they were almost always fun, because we always knew it was just some other bored teenager doing it, and we could relate to that.

I remember a prank called calling a friend of mine and asking him: “Are you naked? Heh, heh, heh!” And my friend answered: “Underneath my clothes I am! Want to see?” And those kinds of things everyone my age and older pretty much always remember fondly. Maybe our parents didn’t appreciate it, but we did.

So today, where we all get marketing spam calls all the time, and so often the caller ID says: “Unavailable”, shouldn’t there be one designated: “Prank Call” so that we can receive a prank call if we’re bored and want one, and we promise not to tell on them? Surely there must be some unused area code for prank calls nationwide, just like Hollywood movies have the 555 prefix. Then we could choose to accept them or refuse them, depending on our mood. And it wouldn’t cost us any minutes or data: the prankster would pay for that.