Because I am the baby of my family (by 12 years) I was lucky enough to have an older sister who was pregnant around the same time my mom was pregnant with me. 6 months after I was born I was an uncle and my niece Chrissy was born.

In the beginning, we did not play well together. We would bite, pull hair and end up in tears by the end of any time we were together. I am sure my mom and sister thought we would never get along. In time we did get along, very well, and became best playmates which our parents should have been more afraid about.

We had a lot of fun with our vivid imaginations. We played we were plaque in a mouth of a person. We created our bedrooms into apartments and pretended to be adults, dating a NKOTB and then when we got tired of real life, and we created drama. We had hobo Joe living in our complex and I ended up having a stalker trying to kill me.

Yes, we can up with all these weird and crazy events to play out and we would laugh so hard and just enjoy spending time together.

One of our famous games we played came from one of many sleepovers. We set up my brother’s old tent which still smelled from the attic. It was hot in there but it was a private little area away from it all. We decided to drag in a phone (we didn’t have cordless phones then) and we called the famous 1-800-tampons line to see what questions we could get away with.

We started asking common questions pretending not to know what a period was or how to use the tampons. We then started to create characters to call see how the customer service would respond. I once was a shy girl who didn’t know about the facts of life because my mom had passed away and I was hiding in the closet to ask the questions. During the conversation, my niece would bust in with a loud man voice and scream at me and make whipping sounds and I would hang up.

Of course as an adult now, we know how bad that was but back then, at 12, we thought it was the best thing ever. We never thought we could have had the cops called on us for child abuse.

The last act we put on was I was a southern girl calling about tampons. I happened to be in the barn and my niece was mooing like a cow in the background. The whole plot twist of our joke was that I wasn’t calling about me but for my cow. The woman did not find this funny and my niece and I just screamed a Moo! in the phone and hung up.

By this time we realized they only had a few people working the hot-line and we had spoken to all them several times with all our different scenarios and dramas. When we called back, we happened to get the same lady from before and who said she knew who we were so we just mooed again and hung up. This became the new game.

We would just call and moo and hang up. Of course this whole game had gone on for hours that day, into the next day and even a few days later from each other homes. We didn’t have three way calling back then so I would have to use my sister’s other phone line, while I was on my home phone and had my niece on the other line. I would hold the phones together so we both could hear and then moo.

What we didn’t realize was call tracing was just being developed and they called back. They called back my sister line and left her a message. My sister of course played it for my mom and I was busted. The gig was up. The moo capers had been caught.  The worst part was I had to call my brother in law and tell him what we had been doing so my niece would be punished to.

The next weekend was Easter and the whole family got together for brunch. We did not hear the end of what we did. I think part of the time they were pissed at us but most of the time they were dying with how random, silly and weird my niece and I were.

I will never forget those moments with my niece and how much fun it was. I do not remember the punishment as much as the fun and laughter we shared during our prank calls.

Sometimes I answer telemarketers calls and before they can speak, I moo and hang up. It still makes me laugh.

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