Hey, Ray!

Another random tale of mischief and woe from my adolescence...

It was during that period — 1972 or 1973 — when my friend Charles and I made it our business to prank call as many people in the town of Martinsville, VA, as was humanly possible. Perhaps you'll remember the story of The Pinocchio Lady, who doubtlessly suffered more at our hands (or our voices) than any other single individual. However, there was the case of Mr. Ray Bocock, whom we started out pranking, only to have the table somehow turned on us. Sort of. Anyway, witness the following account:

When I was thirteen years old, I considered Ray's son, Ken, my fiercest rival for the affections of one Mary Beth Hughes, with whom I was madly in love. For reasons that can perhaps be fathomed only by a very peculiar thirteen-year-old lad, I determined that it was up to me to make Mr. Bocock the Elder pay for the sin of having sired said rival by way of the prank phone call. Charles, being the devoted friend and all, was perfectly willing to help me on my quest — mainly because he enjoyed playing on the phone as much as I did — and so we set about plotting Mr. Bocock's demise with evil glee. The man was clearly a monster and needed to be dealt with.

As was our custom, we set up my Lloyd's cassette recorder to tape record the call. I wanted this take-down preserved for posterity. It was going to be brutal.

Ringggg....

"Hello?"

"Hey, Ray!"

"Hey there. Who's this?"

"This is Ronald! Don't you know anything?"

"Oh, Ronald. I didn't recognize your voice."

"Are you deaf?"

"No. Are you sure this is Ronald?"

"Are you sure this is Ray?"

"Pretty sure."

It occurred to me then that, for all our scheming, Charles and I had no plan at all. Now that I had Mr. Bocock on the line, I had no idea how to bring this terrible man to his knees. This could be serious. With the most hostile inflection I could manage, I said, "So, whatcha doing?"

"I was about to go mow the yard."

"Yeah? You know, I just got me a new riding lawn mower."

"Really? Sounds nice. What kind did you get?"

"Uh, a Sears, I think."

"You didn't get a Toro? That's a lot better."

"Uh, no."

Holy cow, this was falling apart quickly. Mr. Bocock actually sounded very nice. But how could that be? His son was trying to steal the love of my life, the maiden who had stolen my heart, the girl with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life — or at least the next couple of months. This simply could not stand. It was time to get ugly.

"Uh, hang on, Ray, my wife's calling me." (Charles makes some noise in the background.) "I'm back. She's a real nag, you know?"

"I bet she wouldn't nag you if you'd get on that riding lawn mower and mow the yard."

"Really?"

"Pretty sure."

"Uh, yeah. I guess I will then."

"That's good. Well, give her my best, will you?"

"I will!"

"All right then. Well, thanks for calling, Ronald. Talk to you later."

"Bye, Ray!"

I hung up, not quite sure I had achieved my objective. I'd had the man square in my sights, but he was so... so... cordial I just couldn't bring myself pull the trigger. Of course, it wouldn't do to let on to Charles that our wicked little plan had been derailed, so I gave him a sly grin and said, "We sure got him, didn't we?"

"Oh, yeah! I bet he doesn't even have a riding lawn mower."

Big laughs all around. "Yeah, and you know his wife nags him."

"All the time!"

After that, Charles and I called Mr. Bocock a couple more times, and the conversations went just about the same way. Those I did not record, alas. I never could bring myself to say anything bad to him, even about his son, and it wasn't long before it didn't matter anyway because Mary Beth Hughes had pretty much spurned the both of us. And a couple of years later, Ken Bocock and I took to playing golf together. What do you know — Ken was pretty much all right! And in my later teens, when I played a lot of golf with my dad, we often ended up in a foursome with... Ray Bocock. Damn, he was a great guy! Fun-loving, witty, sometimes a bit acerbic, in an endearing way.

Hell, no, I never told him I was Ronald. Would you?

I understand Mr. Bocock passed away a good many years ago — not long after my dad, as a matter of fact. I have to admit, I'm kind of glad Ronald made his acquaintance. Ronald probably learned something. I think he really needed to.

The Pinocchio Lady

Sometimes I miss the days of making prank phone calls.

When I was between the ages of 10 and 15, give or take a decade or so, I was the diehard crank caller. Generally just harmless fun—you know, of the "I'm lost at the supermarket and I can't find my momma" ilk. Now and again, I made calls that made me feel bad later, such as when I presented myself as "Mother Bell" from radio station WDUM and promised the call recipient ten dollars for saying "hello" when he or she answered the phone. I got a lot of mailing addresses that way, and it grieves me to think that people were once so trusting. Needless to say, they never received a penny, and for this particular sin, I flagellated myself appropriately in later years. Or at least I allowed my wife to.

My favorite, though, was a series of calls I made in the summer and fall of 1973. I was 14 years old and was learning that I had inherited my dad's temper. Unlike Dad, I sometimes enjoyed acting on it and paying back tenfold certain people who offended me.

There was once a woman called the Pinocchio Lady. I found her by misdialing my friend Charles's phone number. When she answered, I thought it was his mother, so I asked for Charles. "Charles?!" exploded a very cranky, high-pitched, nasal voice. "There ain't no Charles here. And don't you ever, ever call this number again."

Ah. A challenge. Well, I called back the number I thought perhaps I had dialed by mistake, and sure enough, that was it. "Oh, it's you again!" she wailed. "I TOLD YOU TO NOT CALL HERE!"

"You sound like you have a really big nose," I said. "Are you the Pinocchio lady?"

"Pinocchio lady? I don't know what that is. You hang up RIGHT NOW and don't you EVER call back here again!"

Guess who called the Pinocchio lady day in and day out for many weeks. Yes, and when I told my friend Charles about this, he happily joined in the fun. We took turns calling and recording them with my little Lloyds cassette tape recorder. Usually, I'd start out pleasant, with something like, "Hello, have I reached the E****'s residence?" When the affirmative reply came, I'd holler, "No, I haven't! I've reached the Pinocchio lady!" One time, I told the poor woman I was going to cut off her long nose with a cross-cut saw, and that was how I learned some of the words that I use today when I'm really peeved.

Finally, one day, a gruff male answered. When I asked if he was the Pinocchio man, he said that he actually wasn't, but that he was going to have the phone tapped so he could find out who we "damned little pests" were. That scared me a little, so I didn't call back for a couple of days.

Eventually, we grew tired of this sport and moved on to calling the parents of kids we didn't like and telling them that their children had stolen some copies of Playboy magazine from the local newsstand and hidden them under their mattresses. (I have no idea how many of them actually got caught with hidden copies of Playboy.)

Over a decade later, when I lived in Chicago, one day, just on a whim, I dialed the Pinocchio lady's number (it was still firmly etched into my memory, and I still remember it to this day), and when Mrs. E****'s familiar voice answered, I almost...almost...followed through with the cruel quip, "Hey, Pinocchio lady. Remember me? I'm out now!"

But I didn't. Some wee smidgen of maturity had taken a bit of the pleasure out of injecting a little misery into some innocent person's life.

If Mrs. E**** is still alive (something tells me she's not, as she sounded not only big-nosed but rather old back in the 70s and 80s), she does have my sincerest apology. I was just a kid doing what kids do, and sometimes that's not so nice.

Of course, there's always the possibility that, on some level, she had as much fun being a Pinocchio lady as we had turning her into one. I rather hope so.