Tried working on the huge personality survey again. And got stuck on another difficult question:

"Have you ever made prank calls?"

Now, that depends. Not on how you define "prank", but on how you define "calls."

Let me explain.

As is their norm, the university I attended oversubscribed the number of freshmen they let enter, anticipating that a fair proportion would drop out in the first term. So they put the overflow, of which I was part, into the floor lounges of the dorms. Eight to ten guys crowded in with bunkbeds. And to meet the university's contractual obligations, they installed one telephone. For all of us.

This does not build minion loyalty to the academic institution.

So, when our cohort finally got thinned out, and the lounge was emptied by folks moving into regular rooms, no one felt any guilt over continued use of that unattended, and more importantly, unbilled telephone. Now, you couldn't call family or friends. Good ole Ma Bell and the university would be able to figure out who was financially responsible for that call.

But the Pope?

How would they know which one of us called him? (Didn't actually make it to His Holiness. Did get the Vatican, but no one spoke English, and no one at our end knew Italian.)

Did get ahold of Wayne Gretsky. And a few other sports favorites that I no longer remember. And the White House. No luck with the Kremlin.

Those were definitely calls, but do not qualify as pranks in my mind. We really did want to talk to those folks.

Now, my roommate and I were the nerds of the floor, and perhaps, the entire dorm. And had our running battles with the jocks.

Once opened the outlet on our side of the wall to reach and unscrew the power to the jocks' stereo next door. Exciting, especially when the screw driver in your hand arc-welds across the two boxes, spraying sparks of molten metal in the air. But it worked, and they never knew why. But begged us to undo what we had done.

Now, that was a prank, but also was not a phone call. I'm getting there...

One of the other jocks, the one who suggested Gretsky's name, lived across the hall and up several rooms. In the next-to-the-last room of the hallway. No longer remember what our beef was, but there came a time when we were after him, and opportunity presented itself.

The guys in the last room, next door to the jock, were both gone for the weekend.

So we went to the lounge free-phone on Friday night, and called the empty room. And then disconnected the appropriate wires in the lounge phone to keep the circuit open, but make it appear as though the phone was properly hung up. And if you checked that phone (he did), it sounded dead.

So, until Sunday pm, when his neighbors returned to campus, that phone rang.

And rang, and rang, and rang.

Only about a meter from where he would like to have put his head at night to sleep.

He spent Saturday night sleeping in a chair in the TV lounge.

So, it was a prank. But since the phone was not answered, and we knew it would never be answered, it technically wasn't a "call." Especially since the folks in that room never heard the ring (the jock jimmied their door open on Sunday and finally silenced the phone).

So how do I answer that question?

Got to go... Burger Night again. Wife reprimanded me for helping prep the condiments last month (afraid we would inherit that chore along with so many others), so I'll have to watch myself.