Sarah Nigbor

As my aunt has been cleaning out the home my grandparents and later mother lived in, she has found some priceless treasures of family lore. At least one item should have remained lost, in my opinion.

My frugal grandmother must’ve kept every little thing that she thought had some kind of meaning, including my embarrassing citation from the River Falls Police Department from when I was 15 years old. It was kept in her bedroom in some tucked away place with other family treasures. Yes, I received a fine and yes, I was caught making prank phone calls. With my best friend, who shall remain nameless. Let’s just say his mother was even less impressed than mine was.

Back in the days before caller ID or cell phones, prank calls were a common pastime for bored children in the summer. Honestly, it was usually innocent, mischievous fun, at least to us, but probably not the recipient of the calls. A common one was, “This is the so&so power company. We’re just calling to make sure your refrigerator is running.” When the hapless caller answered yes, then we belted out “Well, you better go catch it!” before slamming the phone down with a resounding click. I can still hear the shrill little ring sound the old rotary phones made when you slammed the receiver down.

Another favorite was pretending to be from NutriSystem (this was usually to one of our friends) and offering them complimentary services, complete with singing the NutriSystem theme song from TV. I will say, one time my grandparent’s neighbor accused me of calling her a not nice name on the phone, insinuating that her behind might be larger than most, but I was innocent. I was at Valley Fair the day she received the phone call and remember, cell phones didn’t exist. I was far too busy riding Thunder Canyon to be making long-distance phone call on a payphone.  I’m pretty sure it was the neighbor kids down the road, one of whom is ironically married to a police officer now.

Back to my shameful citation. One summer day my friend and I were hot, bored and had nothing to do besides a few chores on my mother’s list. Those could wait. We decided it would be fun to prank call my old neighbors, who had been absolutely dreadful to live beside. Their children swore like sailors, the parents argued and shrieked at all hours of the night, and they constantly stole stuff from our yard and revved their engines in the wee hours.

I don’t remember the details of the phone calls, of which we made several, but I know we left messages on their answering machine. Little did we know, a new technology had come out called “Caller ID.” When the old neighbors got sick of the calls, they in turn called the police and turned in my number. The jig was up. We were caught.

My friend’s mother didn’t allow him to come over for months after that. My mother, who was pretty easy going, thought it was funny but told us to never do it again. And we didn’t. I was mortified when it was listed in the newspaper back then, but luckily they didn’t use my juvenile name. My friend’s mom cut out the blurb from the police reports and hung it on their fridge so he could be reminded of his transgression every day. I’m glad my grandmother didn’t hang my citation on the fridge. However, being the little scamp that I was, gleefully cut out a citation my cousin received a few years later and hung it on Grandma’s fridge as a reminder that her other grandchildren weren’t complete angels either.

My aunt had never heard the prank call story and now it might end up in one of her family scrapbooks. When a Meals on Wheels driver thought my mother might have passed on to the next life and requested a welfare check (she was sleeping like a log in her recliner), that was cut out and put into a family scrapbook.

I should thank RFPD for scaring the daylights out of me with that citation and police interview and putting me on the straight and narrow.