… and that’s when I knew I’d gone too far
Idon’t know how many people have listened to this clip that went viral about 15 years ago. It is supposed to be audio from a San Diego, California, radio breakfast show where the hosts prank friends and family members on behalf of a listener, in exchange for a prize. A listener, Bob, gives the radio hosts his home number to call his wife, Lois, and pretend to be his boss. They proceed to “break the sad news” that they’ve had to fire Bob because he was caught diddling his secretary on his office desk.
Lois goes berserk. A stream of smouldering expletives erupts from her lips. Point made, right? That’s a hilarious enough punchline, yes? But no. The hosts decide to ride the prank a bit longer — until a few seconds later she yells on live radio, “And now I don’t feel bad about f***ing his brother!”
We’ve all gone too far in our own lives. This week on Facebook, I invited my friends to share stories that ended with them realising that they might have overstepped some invisible mark. My people did not disappoint.
Vuyo shared a story about a close friend who confided in him that his betrothed had broken his trust and ended up in someone else’s bed — that of a mutual friend. The friend seemed to be taking the matter in his stride, so Vuyo decided to lighten the mood even further by remarking that the friend probably has a mental picture of his fiancée with her co-conspirator in the sack. All hell broke loose and the friend came within a whisker of separating Vuyo’s soul from his earthly flesh. I think that we can all agree that Vuyo, the Dreamer, probably went too far.
This reminds me of one of my favourite John McCain stories. While on the campaign trail in his quest to become US president in 2008, the senator attended a town hall meeting of his Republican supporters in Minnesota. One of his supporters gets the microphone and expresses how he is scared of the possibility of an Obama presidency. McCain takes the mic back and demurely explains that as much as he wants to be the next president, there is nothing to fear about senator Obama ascending to the White House.
Enter a dowdy old lady we now know to be one Gayle Quinnell. I guessed that she figured that with the election less than a month away,
McCain needed all the help he could get. So she took the microphone and told McCain that, look, she couldn’t trust Obama, mostly because he’s an Arab. McCain did not let her finish her hallucination. Instead, he grabbed the microphone from her and calmly corrected her, letting her know that whatever she thought of “Arabs”, Obama wasn’t one. One shudders to think what would have transpired if that had been his running mate, the moose killer from Alaska, Sarah Palin, in that town meeting.
Another friend, Sandi, shares how he lived next to some noisy student accommodation in the Durban CBD when things got really rowdy. He went over there to ask the lads and lasses to tone it down a tad. As it so happens, the reason for the fracas was that the students had thuggish visitors from Umlazi. One of them decided to attend to him at the gate when he came through. Inevitably, a yelling match ensued.
I would probably have walked away and called the police. But our hero decided to whip out his 9mm replica pellet pistol and threaten the young man. A whole squad of the Umlazi boys who had been watching from a distance descended upon him like a swarm of bees on an overturned crème soda truck.
Fortunately for him, a police vehicle happened to be passing.
Even with the police there, the young men were shouting expletives at him, daring him to “put the bullet in the middle of my forehead”. At the police station, a sergeant gave him a stern warning about pointing fake pistols at folks who are quite happy to die over a pack of Stuyvesants.
I was thinking about this phenomenon as I watched Tokyo whats his face embarrass himself on national television. I blame the host of the eNCA program, JJ Tabane. We should all know better than to shine TV lights on Tokyo and place a microphone in front of his nose. Something happens.
I really don’t think he went there to talk about missing billions. But he became overwhelmed by the expectant look on JJ’s face and went for it. Look, I’m not interested in the veracity of the flight of fancy. All I know is that if the host had asked him if he’d been present in that war room the night Osama bin Laden was killed, he’d have retorted, “Who told you about that? But look, JJ, when President Obama calls, you don’t say no.”
The Umlazi boys who had been watching descended upon him like a swarm of bees on an overturned crème soda truck