Crime Spree on Speed Dial UPDATED

**UPDATE**
Mother of Steenky Bee phone me at lunch laughing hysterically. She asked me over and over to tell her this wasn't true. I told her that, yes, this tale is true. She then called me several times to ask me how to print out this sheet. I warned her that if she showed my dad that I would tattle on her. Guess where she was this morning around 9:00 am? Would you believe, the mall? True story.

Also, as a follow up, Krisann and I did get our phone back. As a matter of fact, she mailed it to me in 1995 as a Christmas gift. In 1996, she phoned me and told me to turn on my television to channel 4 local news. Last word on Benji? He is parking cars in Vegas.

Good morning (of afternoon). Let me give a shout out to one of my best girls: Heather over at Riding the Short Bus is celebrating her birthday today. Please give her much love!!! Happy Birthday, Heather! Mwah!

Now.....
Miss Grace's Disgrace tagged me in a meme last week where I am supposed to list a few unspectacular things about myself. But, I'm not going to play by the rules. I'm taking this meme law and breaking it wide open, you hear? This won't be the first time I've broken the law either. Instead of seven random things, I'm telling you one whopper of a secret about my first and only brush with the law.

Now, before I continue, I must preface that my parents have no idea that any of this ever went down. I’ve managed to keep this ordeal a secret from them for over 16 years. I've never kept any secrets from them, save this doozy. Many other people know about my sordid past; my in-laws, my friends, even my bosses know. But my parents have no idea that their daughter may not be so squeaky clean after all.

Let me also point out that my mom checks my blog and then prints out pages for my dad to read. To make sure she doesn’t rat me out to him, I’m going to spill a little secret of hers too. (Aren’t I the nicest daughter, like ever?) Mom has been sneaking off several times a month to do some heavy retail therapy while dad thinks she's at work. So there you go mom, all those times you’ve called me while you’re running around in that mall, little did you know that I was saving this information to use as leverage. You taught me well.

So, rewind with me, if you will, to 1992. It was my junior year at college. It was the year that I had the best bunch of roommates. One of them, Brandi, had been carrying on a friends-with-benefits relationship with Benji, a star linebacker on our football team. Benji would call our apartment at all hours of the night looking for his hook up with Brandi. If me or my other roommate, Krisann, picked up the phone he would simply hang up. We knew it was Benji, even though we didn’t have caller i.d. Had caller idea even been invented yet? I'm not sure. As a matter of fact, I think cell phones were a luxury back then too. They were those large brick looking contraptions that weighed a good 7 lbs. As starving students, the only phone we had in the entire apartment was a flaming red, rotary dial phone that we dubbed “the presidential” phone.

Anyway, Benji phoned our apartment frequently in 1991-1992. Whenever he called and hung up, Krisann and I would just dial him right back and hang up on him. It became sort of a little joke between all of us. We passed those prank calls back and forth so often that we could dial his number on that rotary phone in the dark.

Like all things that spoil so very easily, Brandi and Benji’s relationship ended on a sour note. I guess the deductible on the old “benefits package” was tapped out. However, even after their split, for some reason, the phone hang ups were traded back and forth between apartments.

It’s important to tell you that I went to university in a smaller town near the Utah/Nevada boarder. A great deal of our athletes came from high schools in Las Vegas. Now, I’m sure you don’t have to imagine too hard to know that Utah is a predominantly white state, especially Southern Utah. The influx of most of the athletes from Las Vegas were African American, Benji being one of those.The police department in this small college town was highly suspicious of the Nevada athletes. I’d heard rumors that they tracked and even followed some of them, but at the time blew it off as heresay.

It was at the end of spring semester when the frequency of Benji’s calls increased. One particular Friday night he drunk dialed Brandi several times. The calls were out of control. I mean, can't two college girls stay home to watch a Christian Slater movie fest in peace? (Heathers was like the best movie ever!) The next time Benji called we tricked him and told him that Brandi wanted to meet him under a freeway overpass just ten miles outside of town and she was already there waiting for him. When we hung up and Krisann and I did a little jig in honor of what we thought was our complete coolness. In our minds, we had reached the epitome of awesomeness. The fact that we were home bound and dateless on a Friday night never even occurred to us.

The next Monday at school, rumors were flying that Benji had been arrested over the weekend for marijuana possession with intent to distribute. I wasn’t surprised. I was suprised, however, when two uniformed police officers entered my Russian History class and pulled me out for questioning in connection with Benji’s arrest. It seemed that once Benji got himself thrown in jail, they presented him with stacks of phone transcripts detailing all the calls that he had made over the past twelve months. The Feds were particularly interested in all the calls to our apartment. Benji lawyered up pretty fast and insisted that somehow Krisann and I set him up for his bust.

I was escorted to a cop car and hauled off to the police station in front of everyone. There were no handcuffs, but there was a plexi-glass window and my Miranda Rights. I was terrified. Was I arrested? Was I going to do hard time? Who would I use my one phone call to contact? Was I going to have to wear an orange jump suit? The officers could tell I was visibly upset. Why wouldn't I be? Orange was the most diffiult color to accessorize.

Krisann was already at the station when I arrived. She was sitting on a bench bawling uncontrollably. I nudged her and asked her, “Whacha in for?” We made a pact right there in the waiting room, that I would be her “bitch” in prison and if one of us broke out first, they would come back for the other one.

I was nervous when it became my turn for questioning. I mean, if there was one of those one-way mirror thingys in the interrogation room, should I wave and acknowledge someone was behind it? I was sort of hoping that at some point during my interview that one of the officers would slam his fist down on the table and shout, “Are we going to have to do this the hard way? I need answers now!” just like they did in the movies.

But that never happend. My iterrogation with the arresting officer was pretty anticlimactic. In fact, I've had visits with a loan officer that were more dramatic. I was seated in a fairly comfy chair, given all the lemonade I could drink and even got in on a Subway sandwich order that was going around. I'm not kidding. The police in that town were downright folksy with me and Krisann. Little did we know at the time, all that hospitality was part of the whole good cop/bad cop routine. I was just beginning to settle in, when the Federal Officer showed up. When I saw him I immediately stood up and shouted, “I’ve got a wire on me, you should be warned!” That’s when they turned the heat up on old Jenbo.

The agent strutted over and sat on the desk in front of me. He held our red rotary dial phone in his lap. “I have over 300 phone calls follwed up by instant hang ups between you, your roommate and Benji over the past nine months. We’ve gathered up your class schedules and work timecards. I have personally been tracking your whereabouts for over six weeks,” the FBI agent declaired. “Are the hang ups some sort of code for drug related activity? Are you helping Benji sell drugs to students? What’s wrong with your hair, is it always that nappy?”

I was fine with the line of questioning until the agent brought my hair into the mix. That comment was a little personal and definitely below the belt. Also, a few things were weighing heavy on my mind. How did this agent get our rotary phone? Why did he have our phone? And why was there mayo on my Subway Club when I specifically told the officer, "hold the mayo." I thought, given the circumstances, I would let that one slide.

The FBI agent announced that he had been following Krisann, Brandi and me for weeks. They had our phone lines tapped and had been listening in on every conversation for over three months. They sat outside my work and sometimes came in to scope out what I was doing there. They had even followed us from class to class just because of a few little phone calls. Well, alright, a few hundred phone calls.

After about two hours, the agent could see that Krisann and I were clueless. I imagine he felt a little sorry for us since, as part of our alibys, we admitted that we each spent an unhealthy amount of time watching Heathers over and over. I wouldn't be surprised if his official report mentioned that we were just two dumb twenty-somethings with an unhealthy obsession with Christian Slater.

The agent found Krisann and I innocent of any Federal charges, however, we were charged, at the insistance of Benji by the local law enforcement for phone abuse. Yes, phone abuse, a Class B Misdemeanor. We were booked, fingerprinted, photographed and then released. Krisann looked at me and shrugged, “Well, at least we got a free sandwich out of the deal, huh?”

Krisann and I pled guilty two weeks later in court. The judge, along with everyone else in court, snickered at us when she sentenced us to 100 hours of community service. She even made the comment that she didn’t think in all her years on the bench she had even heard of phone abuse. When we reported to a nursing home to fufill our service hours, we were told that due to our charges, we would not be allowed to answer any phones, or even be in any rooms alone with a phone. The director couldn’t even get that last part out without breaking down and laughing at us.

So Krisann and I spent that summer at the nursing home, playing checkers with and taking the elderly on walks. We fixed their hair, painted their nails and even ran a few errands for them. However, if any of them needed help making a phone call, we had to call the director to come down and actually dial the phone for us. Yeah, for reals.

So, good people, I guess you can consider old Steenky a hardened criminal. If you didn't get enough of this brush with the law, then contact me and I'll tell you about the time my boyfriend used my car (without my knowledge) to steal beer. Better yet, why don't you give me your phone number and I'll call you. Over and over.