Those Cellphone Pranks!

We even have a quaint name for it— text, or txt, and have made current the word’s obsolete verb transitive form, complete with conjugations such as texting and texted, which are just as easily readable as txtng and txtd.  I’m referring of course to one use of the cellphone (or celfon), itself another term commonly used in the Philippines.  Obviously it is short for cellular phone, called handy in Germany and mobile phone somewhere else.

Technically termed as short messaging service or SMS, sending messages through the cellphone or texting has become more ubiquitous than sidewalk vendors.

I read once that on any ordinary day, the collective total of SMS messages of all the countries in continental Europe is very much less than the total number of messages within our country alone. Thus have we been dubbed a “texting nation,” a title clearly underscored by the mode of communication that helped bring about Edsa II.

Political revolutions aside, texting connects us.  It reminds us of occasions we overlook; it tests our patience, offers surprises, and, yes, stretches the limits of our humor.  It is also a mirror of one’s friendships.

Consider this one busy friend who trusts me enough to know I’ll never be his enemy, even when he imagines me straining to cling to my last vestiges of dignity.  I can’t help but laugh at his text anyhow, which goes thus:  ‘One day you’ll be surprised to see me beside you!  You and me laughing, you and me crying, you and me dreaming, you and me having fun; just you and me in the… mental hospital.  I’m the doctor, you’re the patient.’

At times, a message can be downright ridiculous in its excuse for poetry.  Take this:  ‘Promise me we are true friends.  I am the ground, you are the roof; I am the tiles, you are the floor; I am the rays, you are the sun; I am the tree, you are the monkey, okay?  Want a banana?’

As fate would have it, I was eating a banana at that very moment.  It was a cooked banana, which I’m crazy about, and not that fresh ripe one my simian cousins are deemed fond of.  As if that’s assurance enough…

And while we’re on the idea of food, I understood my sister who had to stop her lunch midway and wished to wring my neck.  I forwarded this to her at an inopportune time:  ‘The latest advice from the field of medicine… it’s now easy to self-diagnose.  If your snotball is salty, you have kidney disease; if it’s sweet, you have diabetes; if it’s bitter, you have liver disease; if it’s sour, you have ulcers.  But if you taste it, you have mental disease!’  Imagine how colorful this is in the vernacular.

New Year’s Eve, and an unexpected greeting from a college chum I haven’t seen in years told me nothing has changed between us:  ‘I  give my Happy New Year wishes only to people who are intelligent, witty, charming, talented, and with strong sex appeal.  So… Happy Valentine!’

The fireworks had died down but the cellphones still rang with greetings.  This text the husband got from three colleagues stood out: ‘Wahablamma dzakarni hatta sugromin fajrika minkum unzila.  You have just recited a Taliban prayer that will soften your p_ _ _ _ forever.  Bwa ha ha ha ha…’

The husband, who would not take things sitting down especially in the arena of mischief, fired back this stock answer:  ‘The prayer is futile, for this infidel’s missile.’

Holy Week, on a Good Friday at that, and my cellphone glared with this message:  ‘I met Jesus yesterday.  He was fuming mad.  Judas has disappeared.  Please, go back to Him, NOW!’

This one, though, made me keel over with laughter that solemn day:  ‘You have always been a good friend, always ready to help.  May I ask you to carry my cross?  I’ll do the scourging.’

Elections will always be hot topic hereabouts, and the cellphone is its other battleground.  I received sufficient funny advice on how to vote.  But this take on “Footprints in the Sand” is not easy to forget:  ‘Last night I had a dream.  I was walking on the beach with the Lord, and he was carrying FPJ.  I asked Him, Why do you carry FPJ?  And the Lord answered, My child, my child, lasing na naman.’

Sometimes, pranks get the better of us.  It pays to be reined in by the warning that if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

‘Pass this text to 10 people, and you’ll get 150 pesos worth of free load,’ said a message from a friend, a credible person with enough brains to become manager.  No problem.  I fired the message to 12 numbers to make sure that I get the required 10, and waited.  And waited.  Take it from the mouths of babes; a young niece who belongs to the more tech-savvy generation answered:  ‘Are you sure this is true, Auntie?’  Too late.

Three months later, I got the same message from another friend!  There’s no stopping that prank.  Nor our gullibility.  Funny we never got to talk about that, my friends and I.

This brings me back to a couple of years ago when I bought a cellphone set, SIM included.  A text message four days later from a certain three-digit number told me I won a cash prize and could claim it from any of the telecom company’s outlets.  It was not a fluke.  I was told over the phone that I might even qualify to have the prize multiplied fivefold, which was confirmed by their posters.

An unexpected win is a most welcome innocent high.  But I was given the runaround when I tried to claim the prize, was told different things, and was given a look reserved not for a lucky winner but for someone who’s a suspect for grand larceny? too steep a price for a fleeting high.  But that is another story.

(2004)