Punk'd

Yesterday I got punk'd (or at least pranked). It was good. In fact, it was beautiful. If it hadn’t been me on the receiving end, I would have laughed my butt off. But now that I’ve regained my composure and slept on it, I do have to chuckle a little. Not that the perpetrators won’t be punished, but it was pretty good. Here’s the story:

Yesterday I was depressed, and I emailed my friend Kris in Montana to complain. It was the usual: life sucks, work depresses me, I’m stressing over bills I need to pay, I’ve got to deal with things I’d rather avoid. We emailed back and forth a few times and I told her what else was going on with life and Carlos. Including that Carlos wants a plasma TV. Now, we all want a plasma TV. Preferably a really big one. But wanting one and getting one are two different things, and usually I’d consider the suggestion just a random thought. You know, when your mate starts babbling and says whatever comes into his pea brain. But yesterday I was a little emotionally raw. And I was feeling broke and not happy about it. So in the course of whining to Kris, I got into a little rant about Carlos and the stupid TV. Not a big rant, just a little one. But it was enough.

Kris and I had done our emailing around lunch, and then I went back to work. Around 5:30 pm I went to the soda machine, and came back to find there was a new voicemail on my phone. The message was, “This is Troy from Best Buy, the 60 inch plasma TV that Carlos ordered is here whenever you’d like to pick it up.” Oh yes, 60 inches no less. I had to play it twice to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.

Now, I try to be a reasonable guy: normally I stop and count to “diez” before I call Immigration. But not this time; I hit “Send” before I even reached “tres.” Fortunately for Carlos, the INS was closed (seriously, do those people EVER answer the damn phone?), and I was left in a combination of impotent rage and panic. Conveniently he has no phone, so calling and screaming was out of the question. The INS clearly was going to be of no help to me. And, I’d have to make the long walk home before I could choke the life out of him with my bare hands. On the verge of exploding, I saved the message and planned to have a VERY serious chat once I’d done a few shots and calmed down.

You’re seeing where this is going. Hanging onto the shredded remains of my nerves with both hands, I emailed him and gently asked if he had ordered a TV. No response. I worked and stewed for another 2 hours before I left, headed for the first bar where I could get a drink and collect myself. On the way I called Kris to bitch….and she asked if Carlos liked his new TV. Yes, she’d gone out after work, had a few drinks, and gotten the bartender to prank-call me pretending to be from Best Buy. I’d been punk'd.

But I love her anyway…and paybacks are hell.