I just got this (fabulous) comment from Whitney:

Dear Sam,
This doesn't have anything to do with your posts, but somehow you worked your way into my dream the other night, which brought back the craziest memory of you that I have.....
Do you remember going to the homeless shelter in Pontiac and serving food with church (umm, ok I NEVER went back to church after getting confirmed, does that mean I am going to Hell?)
Ok, so you have the memory of going to the homeless shelter, right? Do you remember sneaking into the bathrooms there to use the pay phone (what a weird place to use the phone) and then we called 1-800-TAMPONS and told them that the string broke off the tampon and it was stuck? And they must of known it was a prank because they told us that there was no way the string could break... or maybe they just could hear us laughing.
What a weird thing to do at a church function. That answers my question, yes I am going to Hell, but it's not because I didn't go back to church, it was the bad things I did at church that are sending me there.
Love,
Your long-lost Wednesday Night Confirmation Buddy

Believe it or not, there are a few reasons why this is funny. Yes, it’s hilarious that I prank called 1-800-TAMPONS from a homeless shelter on a church trip, but the real kicker is that I DID THIS ALL THE TIME. I actually don’t even remember this particular incident (although I do remember going to the homeless shelter), but I DO remember that my go-to prank call was always calling 1-800-TAMPONS. The call usually went something like this:

Operator: Hello, Tampax help line, how may I help you?
Me: Hi. Um, I need some help cause I was trying to pull out my tampon and the string fell out and now the tampon is stuck in there!
Operator: Miss, I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. We test the weave on our tampons with great care and there is no way that could ever happen.
Me:(Burst out laughing and hang up the phone…think I am the most hilarious and brilliant person ever)

I must have made this call hundreds of times and, honestly, I can’t remember when, how, or why I started doing it. But, every time I made a new friend I always had the same mischievous suggestion, “Hey, let’s call 1-800-TAMPONS!” I think I had an obsession with tampons because I was a late bloomer. I didn’t know that it wasn’t possible for the string to come out, because I had never actually USED a tampon…except to make a trap…My sister and I used to be friends with these two sisters who lived in our neighborhood and would often have sleepovers at their house. Without fail, the older sisters would gang up on the younger sisters and soon a full out war would begin… I would often devise traps with my cohort Emily in attempt to inflict pain on our evil sisters. Usually these would involve buckets of water placed on tops of doors, trip wires, or anything else you may have seen in a Home Alone movie. However, one day I had a stroke of brilliance. “What if,” I thought, “I could put something really slippery right inside the doorway and lure them to come running in here? They would certainly fall on their butts and maybe even break a tailbone! Hurray!” I went through the closets and found the perfect ingredients…a box of tampons and a garbage bag. I unloaded those wonderful cylindrical tampons onto the floor and placed the trash bag on top of them, making the perfect situation for a slip. I baited Heather and Sarah in with some sort of brilliant taunt like, “Hey! Come and get me! I’m in here!” and soon they were plowing in the doorway—at which they easily stepped on and smashed all of the tampons under that garbage bag. Turns out I misjudged how much weight a plastic applicator can actually withstand. My plan was foiled. Foiled again.

But, I digress. There was, in fact, a time (sixth grade to be exact) when me and my friend Jessica were obsessed with calling 1-800 numbers. At lunchtime we would head over to the Abbott Middle School pay phone and spend the entire lunch period calling different 1-800 numbers that we had either seen somewhere or made up and wanted to see if they really existed (i.e. 1-800-SEXTOYS). Okay, maybe 6th Graders shouldn’t have been calling dirty phone numbers, but it’s not like we could ever get to anything juicy…you needed a credit card to get to that point. The question is: Why did we never get in trouble for sitting at the pay phone for entire lunch periods? I guess the other question would be: Why was this so much fun? The thing is, people didn’t have cell phones back then. Using a phone was a novelty, it wasn’t something that we had access to 24/7. At home we would get in trouble for being on the phone all the time, but here we had found a way to have access to a phone for 25 minutes and make all the free calls we wanted. It was like a dream come true. Kids just don’t know how lucky they have it these days.