Not mine, but I was involved
So I'm sitting at a mate's house watching Minder and the phone rings.
He walks over answers it, says "Sorry mate, you've got the wrong number" and hangs up.
"Who was that?" I ask.
"No idea," he says, "Some bloke looking for a girl named Lisa."
And the phone rings again.
Up I jump, grab the phone and...
"Hello?"
"Hello is Lisa there?"
"I'll just check, who's calling?"
"It's Tim."
"Hang on."
I wait for a few minutes.
"Hello? Look I'm sorry, she's just gone out, I'll get her to call you back."
"Oh come on, just tell her I'm sorry and I need to talk to her!"
"OK, hang on."
I wait for a few minutes.
"Sorry mate, she doesn't want to talk to you. She'll call you back in a day or so."
"This is ridiculous! I said I'm sorry! Just tell her I need to talk to her!"
"Look I'm sorry, but she just doesn't want to talk to you... umm.. she's just gone out anyway so there's nothing I can do.
"Oh God... I'm an idiot, I've really done it haven't I, she's never going to talk to me."
"Well I wouldn't after what happened if I was her... but what do I know? I'm just the guy who rushed over to give her a shoulder to cry on aren't I?"
"What?? Who is this???"
"This is the bloke who's been waiting for you to fuck up for a long time, Timmy and now you have."
"Steve? Is that you?"
"Bye now" *click*
In retrospect it probably wan't the nicest thing to do, but it was a repeat of Minder and I was bored.
(I'd apologise for the length, but then I'd have to apologise for being a selfish prick as well... where would it end?)
( difficultchild, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 2:30, 1 reply)

Get off my knees, you evil woman!
When she was younger my sister was pure undiluted evil. Oddly, she's sweet as anything now, but as a child...

She and I always got on rather well. My brother and I got on well too, with the occasional fight. But my brother and sister were an entirely different matter. The war was taken to an entirely new level when my sister was about ten and managed to hit/punch him in the leg in a spot that really hurt. No idea how, she just did. He started crying and she took advantage of this.

She convinced him that she had been trying to unscrew his kneecaps. He ran away in terror. I may have possibly played along by mentioning in casual conversation a few hours later that if joints were unscrewed, the limb in question would fall off. I talked about elbows - had I talked about knees, he would have gotten suspicious... but because it was elbows, it was a reliable source of information.

He was scared out of his mind. All she had to do was come after him with her hand in a claw-like shape, or reach towards his leg and he would scream and run off. This carried on for the better part of two weeks, always out of my parents sight.

The entire thing reached a climax when she did it out in the garden, and he ran into the house, grabbed onto my mother's leg and started screaming and begging mum to stop her from unscrewing his kneecaps, he didn't want his legs to fall off, please mum help!

My sister got a clip round the ear for that. Once the rest of the family had stopped pissing themselves with laughter.
(calamarain just invented dehydrated water, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 2:13, Reply)

Gullible
I was told gullible was not in the latest version of The Oxford English Dictionary.

I was wrong.


Dammit.





Bindun.
(kickstandrich last had sex with your mum/sister/wife/daughter on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 2:05, 1 reply)

My Dad used to own his own shop
He'd take work experience lads from the local high schools.

Obviously he would use this to wind them up mercilessly, including filling out their work experience diaries for them and sending them for the obligatory long weights.

One day he retreats to the rear of the shop and emerges with a two foot wide, three foot high box. He is visibly struggling to carry the box and him being quite a large man it certainly seems as though it is heavy.

He places it on the counter and asks the work experience boy to take it to the post office and get it weighed and sent to a certain supplier.

"Be careful though, it's really heavy"

The lad sizes up the box and lifts with all of his might...........

The box flies in the air with hundreds of tiny pieces of packing foam coating the area like Christmas snow.

The lad had to rewrite his diary incidentally, the school found it hard to believe he had made over 400 cups of tea in just one week.
(Dangerous Disco Trev Isn't my real name, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:57, Reply)

In my 1st job
I was 17 and there were 4 of us who only worked Saturday mornings in a mail room. There were 3, 17 year olds and an old lady. The old lady used to say she was off to the toilet and then return a few minutes later stinking of booze. The stuff we convinced her of.

The company was checking to see if any chairs were damaged so they didn't over order on new ones. We told her the guy looking at the underneath of the chairs was an FBI Narc and he's been tipped off that she's got a stash under her chair. When he came to her chair she had a massive kick off about how she'd never do drugs and she wants her lawyer.

We convinced her that the company was actually a consipracy (for what we never thought of, we just said conspiracy) and she couldn't trust anybody else in the office. She'd always stop talking if someone else walked by and wouldn't talk to anybody. And then she'd wink at us when they were gone.

And finally, she went to the shop on her break and asked if we wanted anything. We asked for some diet water and told her that the shop owner's on comission for regular water so he'll try his best to sell her that, but to not take no for an answer. She was gone an hour and came back empty handed. She'd been barred from the shop.

Might have been a bit cruel, but it was hilarious to us kids.
(Visionaryofthe1980s www.myspace.com/visionariesofthe1980s, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:39, 1 reply)

I run a bar...
and last weekend, we sent one of the new guys to the other side of town to another bar, to borrow some "ice making solution" as we had "run out".
The beauty of it is, they cottoned on, and sent him back with a 5 litre bottle of water.

Also, in the past, in other jobs, I've caught people out with the ubiquitous "long stand" and the need for "more sparks for the grinder", but my absolute favourite has to be sending someone to the hardware store for some fallopian tubing...
(UXB you said it man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:36, 1 reply)

Surely it's bindun, if not, it needs to
She'll call me, she promised...
(pizzaforcat ate some cement and HARDENED the FUCK UP on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:26, Reply)

This QOTW has given me an idea
Now, I've been drunk enough to watch late-night Live Poker on Channel 5, and I was so bladdered I found it riveting. I was on the edge of my seat, gasping in horror when someone went up against pocket aces, hiding behind my hands when a player was all in, biting my nails as the river card was turned...

I enjoyed it so much I watched it the next night, stone-cold sober. My God, it was fucking dull! Just people playing cards, all night. Barely talking. Hardly moving. Dull. Dull. Dull.

They could liven it up so easily. For example, how about having a midget in a clown suit run on, and start dancing - and everyone just ignores him and keeps on playing cards, like nothing is happening. All the drunk people would be sitting at home, thinking, "What the fuck? Why is there a midget dancing? Why is no-one noticing him? Am I seeing this? Did someone put something in my fucking drink? WHY IS THERE A FUCKING MIDGET?"

Then, the camera switches to one of the player's faces, the lights dim, and eerie music starts playing in the background. He looks directly down the lens, and whispers, "Watch out for the fairy king" then the camera zooms out, lights come up, and the game resumes like nothing happened. Now that is good television.

I've also wondered if it would be possible, upon winning the lottery (or bumping off a wealthy elderly relative) to buy ITV news for one night, completely rent the studio and staff, then run stories of your own choosing.

Bong

"The News at Ten - Madonna used to be a man!

It has been confirmed today that pop singer Madonna was born Barry George Johnstone, and underwent an extensive sex change operation in 1982 to become the Pop Princess we know today. Madonna was unavaliable for comment - Guy Ritchie is said to be devastated. More on that story later."

Bong

"The Pope has issued a statement, urging his followers, and I quote, 'Not to take all of this religion stuff so seriously. It's all just made-up nonsense anyway.' We'll have more on this after the weather..."

Then you could head down the pub the next night and see how many people are talking about it.

"Ere, d'you know that Madonna's a bloke?"

It would be fucking brilliant.
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:22, 4 replies)

My then boyfriend once convinced me that
Penguin bars were called 'penguin' because they were the original energy snack eaten during the first expedition to the South pole.

Then again, I did get him back later by making him believe that there was a special species of aquatic bees.

We had a competition to see who could get the other to believe the most outlandish lie.
( TFD is sporting this season's finest necropants, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:18, 1 reply)

told my nephew
that when the ice cream man plays music, it means he's run out of ice cream. he was 5 before he realised i was lying.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:15, 1 reply)

I once was at the seaside...
And, soaking my drawers with faux-excitement, I pointed an outstretched finger over his shoulder and yelled "LOOK OUT! A MURDEROUS SEA BIRD WITH AN AXE! AND IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR YOU WITH A GLINT IN ITS EYE!"

And that was my most gull-libel moment.

Ahem.
(jabboy, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:04, 1 reply)

The Danny Glover Game
My friend likes to play the Danny Glover game when meeting new people:

If someone raises the subject of a famous film with a famous black actor starring in it you should pretend to be convinced Danny Glover is the man in question.

e.g. - "Yeah, I remember The Matrix, Danny Glover plays a cool bald guy with round shades on."

No matter how fervently people try to correct you, carry on claiming it's Danny Glover. After a while most people will stop arguing and just accept that the person they have just met truly believes Danny Glover was in The Matrix.

Never reveal that you are on a wind-up or you lose the Danny Glover Game, it is for your own personal amusement only.

Advanced players can raise the stakes a bit by replacing genuine examples of Danny Glover roles that your opponents throw back at you with Denzel Washington

e.g. - "You mean the cop from The Crow? No, that was Denzel Washington..."

I bet you all try it this weekend......
(Nick The Snick briefly escaped from Lurkerville on:, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:04, 7 replies)

2 gems
Convincing my Belgian girlfriend (now wife) that Daffodils are called "Turds".

Being convinced at a tender age that Oriental ladies private parts run horizontal instead of vertical.
( timothy claypole, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 1:03, 1 reply)

I work on the IT systems and occasionally respond to text messages for six of the UK's most popular psychic SMS services.
 
It's a mixed bag of emotions, to be interested in, continuously following peoples depressing lives. You hear & read about the good times and the bad times, their most sordid secrets, inner feelings, their hopes and their dreams.

They generally don't want hippy, spiritual crap, they just want some guidance because they've become so lost and desperate for somebody to tell them everything will be alright.

But you know, as easy as it is to take some reassurance that on a really low, bizarre level, you're somehow helping these people, it's also a real shame to interact with such fucking gullible people on a daily basis.

They think it's all real and it's not. We just make it all up as we go along.
 

coming next week, a list of mobile numbers...

( TonyUNDERSCORE from the Internet, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:48, Reply)

Convinced a boy that boys have periods
In Year 9, there was a particularly gullible boy in my class called Weed. One day, the class clown and I decided to test the true extent of his gullibility.

Jon: So Weed, have you started your periods yet?
Weed: What the fuck? Boys don't have periods!
Jon: Yeah they do! Haven't you started having them yet?
Weed: Fuck off, boys don't have periods.
Me: They sure do, weren't you paying attention in science?
Jon: Yeah, if you haven't started yours yet, I'd be worried. You're supposed to start them when you're about 12.
Me: Yeah, what age did you start yours, Jon?
Jon: I was a late starter, didn't get mine till the end of Year 7
Me: Weed, how do you not know about this?
Weed: So..um...what happens?
Jon: It's horrible, all blood starts coming out your knob and stuff
Weed: Really?
Jon: Yeah, and for like a week beforehand all you can think of is chocolate and GBH
Me: Have you really not started your periods yet?
Weed: Oh, I just remembered - I have started my periods!
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:46, 5 replies)

Melons!
Just thought of this!

In high school, some friends and I managed to convince a girl that the word for lizard was in fact not lizard, but melon. (In her defense, she had come to the US only a few years prior, but was still quite fluent...)

As priceless as her excited yell of "A melon! Look, a melon just went into the bushes!" was, I can only imagine the looks of constipated bewilderment we must have sported as we tried our best not to fall over laughing.

I don't think we ever actually told her. I really hope no one has.
(Rem Sir, why are you thrashing about on the floor?, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:21, 2 replies)

And so I found myself, covered in white stuff
Science practicals always were a great experience at my secondary school. We'd seldom get the equipment out, so any lesson where we'd forgo the books would lead to some mishap; paper aeroplanes set on fire with bunsen burners and launched out of windows; the slightly special kid dipping his nose into copper sulphate and finding his nose turn blue - the usual shenanigans.

On this one, fateful day, it was my turn to be the centre of the action. We were doing a bog-standard experiment, the kind that seems dangerous and exciting to a 13-year old, but in reality was so simple a quadriplegic rhesus monkey could handle. It was something involving the bunsen burners and a chemical or two anyway - the exact details have since been lost as my mind tries to blot out the memory. Bunsen burners and chemicals... Certainly no place for talcum power.

Yes, talcum powder.

As our experiment came to a happy (and slightly charred) end, my most trusted, straight-faced friend turned to me and said "now we need the talcum powder".

The usually proficient cogs in my mind whirred back and rewound to the teacher's lesson instructions. I could find no mention of talcum powder, but this accomplice was not the sort to play a practical joke. Dutifully, I trotted to the teacher's desk and asked without hesitation "can we have the talcum powder please?"

Needless to say, the teacher was slightly taken aback. He asked me what I wanted, sounding bewildered, and I proudly re-iterated my request. Only then did it occur to me that I might well have been "had".

I can still remember the teacher, who bore a striking resemblance to Dave Grohl, as his face cracked first into a wide, shit eating grin, and then an uncontrollable laugh.

"Talcum powder?!" he burst out. By now, the other students who'd been earwigging on the conversation started laughing too. I nodded, my face turning a shade of red. "hold on" he said between his giggles, and he strolled to his desk to produce a tube of talcum powder.

Quite why I took the item, knowing it wasn't needed and that I'd been the subject of a ruse, I don't know to this day. But take it I did, and I walked back to my desk, and with it, the smirking faces of my friends.

Could it get worse? The answer, as always, was a resounding yes. In my haste to sit down and avoid the stares of the class, I tripped up. The talcum powder container slammed on the ground and burst, covering me in its fine white contents, like a million Christmas snowfalls delivered at once by Satan. The skitters and giggles from my classmates were swept away as a crescendo of laughter took its place, with me lying prone on the floor, covered in talcum powder. I could do no more than hope it would cover me entirely and save me from view.

I never lived it down.
(Gammon Rod A not-so-distant relative of the Crimson Helm, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:08, Reply)

On vacay
So ashamed of this one, as I consider myself moderately technologically savvy.

Anyway, was on vacation and visiting some office building where my father was temporarily working. He waves me over to his colleagues, who are deep in conversation. One lady is describing a sort of device, like a microphone, which you could speak into, and it would immediately translate what you said into any language you chose. Of course, I piped up with 'gee, it sure would be handy to have one of those'.

Hm, wonder why everyone went quiet? Oh. It's from a sci fi show on tv. Right, then...

(Ok, so not really gullible and more downright stupid, but still.)
(Rem Sir, why are you thrashing about on the floor?, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:08, 2 replies)

sex education
me and 2 of my mates once got really pissed. well we did that all the time, but this one time in particular, my older friend and myself decided to play a prank on our 12-year-old pal.
so, we sent her to the off license.
for a packet of ovary eggs.
she came back about 15 minutes later, face like thunder, to inform us that we were cunts and that the woman in the offy had given her a very embarrassing sex education lesson.

length? we were still laughing an hour later.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:05, Reply)

Believing the lines of a song were actually true.
While on a journey the radio was playing and it was that song that goes "I'm moving to New York, 'cause I've got problems with my sleep, It's like Christmas came early, Christmas came early for me"
This song is on in the background and I'm not really paying attention and my girlfriend says to me "So yeah, uhm, by the way I'm moving to New York."
And this came as a compelte surprise to me, but we always talk about random crap that isn't actually true, as you do, and I played along and I was like "Oh my God! No way, why's that?"
She replies, "Because I've got problems with my sleep"
And I completely believed her (because she does have trouble sleeping sometimes)
At which point she realises I have no idea she's saying the song lyrics and explains it to me x]

That's not actually a great story, looking back at it, but hey.
( xihpete A neutrino walks straight through a bar, with v>c., Fri 22 Aug 2008, 0:02, Reply)

My kid
wanted to go to Disneyland. I hate Disneyland but he wouldnt shut up. We drove around for a while until I saw a warehouse that had burnt down. "Oh no" I said, "Disneyland burnt down!". We went home.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:57, 2 replies)

Laptop
I bought a laptop from an electrical superstore that I won't name in case it's libellous, but just think of a rock flying through space, of the type that Edmund Halley discovered.

They told me it was top quality and really fast, but in the unlikely event it had a problem just bring it in and they'd fix it while I waited.

Untrue. It's crap. It's slow. It crashes. They don't do servicing in store. I paid £100 for cover. They wanted 4 weeks to repair the hard drive when it failed, so I bought my own and fixed it in a couple of hours.

I am a Grade A sucker.
(randomstupidname would really like this signature field to be bigge, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:41, Reply)

Cant believe i managed this....
I once convinced a girl (22) that sausages grew on trees kind of like bananas did...which was why they had the little links in between them.
(GIbbonsrwild, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:32, Reply)

Not MY most gullible, but possibly my little cousin's.
I have a large extended family who are all quite close, and at some point we were all (about 16-18 of us) sat down having a chineese.

It became clear that there were nowhere near enough sweet and sour chicken balls to go around....

What did we do? Try and share? Did we fuck! Managed to convince the two youngest of my cousins that they were deep friend monkey brains.

1-0 to the older cousins.

(they were really, very good chicken balls)
( The Flaming Ibanez Awww, c'mon, Japanese girls do it!, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:31, Reply)

Actually
...there are quite a few different types of dictionary, and over the years, some of them have played along with the gag, and actually removed the word gullible. For example:

Cambridge Dictionaries
British-American English Dictionary
Rogets Thesaurus (online edition)
English Dictionary (Princeton University)
and Longman Dictionaries.

..are the ones that I've found and most are available online if you Google them. It's pretty funny going through them and seeing if they've taken it out. It tends the be the more academic editions though - student pranks and all that.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:31, 2 replies)

I was gullible enough to think my body liked me...
at least enough to trust it to know when and where to go to the toilet properly.
However, after a rather long and random 'drink n drug' (tm) binge last night I got into bed and drifted off to slumber. I awoke this morning to find a substantial amount of my own faeces on my bedroom floor (thankfully on a piece of paper). No idea what made me think dropping me kecks and curling one out on an essay I'd been writing was the right thing to do.
I no longer trust my body.
(Formaly Over say's hello, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:27, 1 reply)

On a day trip to Lancashire
The police were stopping cars on the other side of the road, I asked my auntie what they were doing.

"Checking passports, you need a passport to get back into Yorkshire"

I spent the rest of the day plotting how I would cling to the bottom of the car to sneak through the checkpoint!
(Mookfish, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:25, 1 reply)

Mr Browne the builder
Years ago, when I was flush with cash, I decided to get a study put on to the house I was living in. My (at the time) partner "knew" the builder, in that he was a friend of some distant relatives of hers. He came round.

He explained how when you factored in the costs of the foundations, it made just as much sense to build on top of the study - make an ensuite of the main bedroom. Why not alter the stairs at the same time. In fact, the main bathroom could do with being extended...and the kitchen...and the lounge.

All of this I agreed to. Mistake number 1.

But where I really, really made an error was in thinking that I could get all this done on time and in budget. I remember this bastard builder (who actually looks a bit like Morgan Freeman, i.e. trust-worthy) telling me he couldn't understand why builders got such bad press.

I then of course watched estimates rise, and even worse agreed timescales go by the wayside. As I was running my own business at home at the time, I witnessed the inevitable falling-off of his attendance to finish the job. We lived for months in a half-finished house, knowing full well that if he and his minions turned up for even three days a week, it could all be over within a month. The situation though drove me mad, and any criticism didn't work, and I'd already paid him most of the money so I didn't even have the ability to withhold payment to get his arse moving.

Ironically, he did a good job (eventually) but I got to enjoy the house for about another 2 months after it was all done, then I left my partner...

...who sold up shortly afterwards, and bought another house...

...and listened to the same builder's spiel (again) even though I tried hard to tell her not to...

...which is why she's now lived in a building site for 18 months, and the work he's done is crap.

So, if you're in Ipswich, don't use the builder who looks like Morgan Freeman. Just don't.

And yes, I know after my last QoTW answer, compared to the lot of many I've got nothing to complain about...

...but in my experience and those of people I know, all builders are wonderful at selling you dreams, then abandoning the job half-way while they work on some other unfortunate's property, and you'll be lucky to see them one day a week once they've got their hands on the cash.
( I_Was_Mordred, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 23:22, Reply)