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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Oh na na, what's my name?

from bmXXXXXXXX@rogers.com
to cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 9:34 AM
subject The name game

Hi there!
A friend sent me a link to your site this morning. Hilarious! You're living my dream. I always wanted to have a website about all the stuff I've seen on the train over the years. I'm retired now but I rode the LSE from 1977 to 2007. Thirty years!
I'd like to tell you about the name game.
I guess the game started in 2005. A train buddy and I used to play this prank on people who would wear their company electronic key cards from their belts. Ones where their face was visible, but also their name.
I usually would go first.
Let's say I saw a name. What I would do is I would come right up to you (usually when everyone was waiting for the train to pull into Oshawa - so end of the line) and I would read your name and then yell out, "Oh my god, Carol Johnson! How are you? How's the family?!"
This was always met with a blank stare and I could see them mentally going through their brain's rolodex to place me. Then I would turn to my train buddy and ask, "You remember Steve, right?"
Nine times out of ten, the person would bold-face lie and admit he or she did remember Steve. Hilarious, because most people don't want to admit they can't remember someone. So then I would start talking about my family and I could see the person getting more and more confused.
My train buddy and I would then head off to our cars.
I'm sure we caused many people many a sleepless night as they struggled to place us.
I'm sure not many people would appreciate this game but our main target as the subjects for this prank were the door donkeys. Great name for them by the way!

Regards,
Bill M.

7 comments:

Ronnie said...

LOL @ "you're living my dream"!

Man CJ ... some people need to learn to dream bigger than a GO train blog!

Bill M said...

I must mention that Steve and I would change this game up by riding in different coaches and varying our train rides, taking different trains, etc.

We'd pull the prank about 14 times over the two years we played it.

Thank you for posting. Remind me to tell you the story of the pregnant lady who "crowned" - fall of 2000, it was.

Anonymous said...

Do tell.

I must admit that's precisely why I don't put my pass card on my pants until just before I hop on the elevator in my building because I don't want people reading off my name from the card.

Must have been quite hilarious doing this to random peeps that just had no friggin clue. lol

lswgirl13 said...

That's great!!! Way to mess with people's minds Bill M!!!
I'm like Anon@9:36, I leave my pass card in my purse until I absolutely need it.

Bill said...

Will tell Ms. CJ.
We had many a good laugh over this prank, Steve and I.

Skin Man said...

Awesome harmless prank, well done Bill and Steve! I particularily enjoyed your choice of targets! Karma, its a bitch!

Kelly said...

hahaha!