Exceptional Prank call? No joke When Harold Called by Elizabeth Emerald Story of the Month contest entry Artwork by VMarguarite at FanArtReview.com

It was on a Tuesday afternoon that Harold called. I remember, because Tuesday was the day we had music class. Debbie, Laurie, and I had been lounging in my room, munching barbecue chips, sucking pretzel rods, and ostensibly doing homework. What we were actually doing was giggling over what Tommy had done in choir that day. When Miss Caruso had gestured to the girls to begin their chorus, Tommy had chimed in with the rest of us. In his discordant bass, he'd barked: "Won't we look pretty in the ballroom." Three times, as written. This would have been amusing enough had Tommy been playing the wise guy. But what made it extra humorous was that Tommy had belted his lines with sincerity. You may understandably wonder how a 16-year-old boy could have inadvertently sung the obvious girls' refrain. Three times, no less. Surely, you'd expect the kid to realize his slip three words in and hope that no one else had. The reason Tommy had been oblivious to his error is that he was (in 1970s parlance) retarded. So here we were on that Tuesday afternoon, sucking pretzel salt, choking on chips, tittering over Tommy Tuneless. We were stereotypical eighth grade girls, all too eager to laugh at another's expense, as if by doing so we'd ensure ourselves exempt from picking up the tab. Of course, sooner or later we all took our turns to pay. And that price could be steep when the table was turned, so that you squirmed to vacate the seat where the buck stopped. Never extremely nice or nasty, we were the mean of mean: petty, pecking, picking amongst our own. We didn't dare befriend, or even defend, the losers and the loners and so lose our own social standing. On the other hand, we weren't cruel enough to torment the "retards." We all made it a point to be particularly pleasant to Tommy, albeit in a blatantly patronizing manner. On that Tuesday afternoon when Harold called, I was taken aback. I couldn't imagine why he'd be calling nor how he got my number. The only reason I knew it was Harold was by his voice. It had a distinctive, slurred inflection, as those of Down Syndrome children often do. Harold was the other Special Ed. boy in music class. At loss for words, I finally found the one most fall upon when answering the phone. "Hi," I said. "Hi, Harold." Debbie and Laurie broke into laughter so quickly that I soon gleaned the reason that Harold called. They must have thought it a great joke to tell Harold that I "liked" him and to encourage him to call me. I clapped my hand over the receiver so that Harold wouldn't hear Debbie and Laurie laughing. I'd observed the common senseless practice of shouting and speaking slowly to disabled people. Harold, with perfect pitch, was far from deaf. Thirty years later, I can't recall what Harold said. I know I did my best to speak normally, as with any acquaintance who called to chat. I probably said something mundane, along the lines of "See you in class Tuesday." What I'll never forget, though was that before we'd hung up Harold's mother got on the line. I could hear the tears in her voice as she poured profuse gratitude for my being kind to her boy. She must have caught the gist of the conversation, and seen that Harold did not appear distressed. Even then, years before I became a mother, I had a searing sense of the agony Harold's mother must have endured. Cringing as her son so blithely dialed his "girlfriend" that Tuesday afternoon. All too aware that he could be crushed by a cruelty she was powerless to prevent. I never felt quite right around Debbie and Laurie after that Tuesday afteroon. I still hung out with them once in a while - after all, they'd been my best friends since fourth grade. That fact made the undeniable distance between us harder to bear. As with a bi-coastal romance, that we would inevitably drift apart was in the cards. The deck held a pair of jokers I couldn't abide. It would have been no big deal had they gone in cahoots against me, pulling a harmless "phony phone call." But this phone call had been all too real. On that Tuesday afternoon when Harold called he - far more than I - had been made the stooge. They'd set him up as straight man - the one everyone laughed at, not with. That Debbie and Laurie staged that sort of show with Harold as unwitting star - rave reviews of his performance to be broadcast by grapevine in a garden of snakes - was what I could not forgive. Though I have to admit, that, on the following Tuesday, when Tommy again brayed about his beauty in the ballroom, I broke up just as heartily as I had the week before - I just couldn't help myself. But this time, rather than intensifying my mirth by catching classmates' eyes, I lowered mine and thought of something that wasn't so funny. Something that wasn't funny at all. Like that Tuesday afternoon when Harold called. Recognized Author Notes Thanks to VMarguarite for the artwork: The Telephone Booth I wrote this story circa turn of the century about this event of thirty years prior. Doing the math, this makes fifty years gone by since that Tuesday when Harold called.

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