Juanita’s First Cell Phone

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

This is a story about our daughter Kelly — er — Juanita.  Kelly is her real name but in the stories I call her Juanita so she won’t know that I’m talking about her.  Why Juanita?  I think I got it from watching Barney sing to his girlfriend Juanita on the Andy Griffith Show.

Juanita’s  grown now but I still love to prank her and my reputation has spread outside the family.  Her boss calls me the “Timstigator”.  I kinda like that.  Hope you enjoy reading about this as much as I did doing the prank.

Mom and Daughter Make the Case for First Cell Phone

I resisted as long as I could but like the tide they never went away for good.  They’d let it go for a while but eventually they’d bring it back.  Jaunita wanted her first cell phone and Kay wanted her to have it so it was just a matter of time.

I finally agreed and Juanita placed the order.  Later that week it would ship to the house and she couldn’t wait!  I never planned to do it.  Honest.  It just sort of fell into my lap and even I didn’t miss the opportunity timing bestowed on me.

Dad Pranks Juanita’s First Cell Phone

I got home before everyone else one evening and noticed a box UPS had left on the porch.  I picked it up and saw it was for Juanita.

The plan came to me instantly–no delayed intelligence this time–no sirree!  This kind of thing must be why Kay says I have a nice strea and calls me sripey.   he he

I had to work fast but I carefully opened the box, pulled the phone out of the bubble wrap, removed it from the plastic bag, and replaced it with a five year old beat up, scratched up phone.  My repackaging was flawless and I doubt the UPS driver could tell it had been tampered with.

The tide–I mean Kay and Juanita—got home a few minutes later and I met them at the door–a dad excited to tell his daughter her first cell phone had arrived!

She snatched that box out of my hands like it was a pumpkin spice latte and carefully opened it up.  She was excited.  Kay was excited.  Stripey was excited.  It took a few seconds for it to register.  Her eyes knew something was wrong but her brain was saying, “Something’s not right about your first cell phone Juanita.  Something’s not right at all.”

At first her expression was one of confusion but in less time than it takes for a wave to crash on the beach she realized she’d been pranked.  “Daaad, what did you do with it!?”  (Why am I always assumed guilty?)  For those of you that know Juanita you’ll be able to picture the look I got.  It’s the one where she squints her eyes and pooches her lips out.  Yeah, that one.  I call it the “I’m pretending to be mad look”.  I was almost pumelled to death before I could retrieve teenage Juanita’s real first cell phone from its hiding place.

That was so much fun and we still talk about it and laugh all over again.  Good stuff.

It’s a good reminder that not every pretty package has something good on the inside.  On the other hand, we shouldn’t immediately discount someone or something if the package isn’t slick and shiny.  Open the package but judge the contents on their merits…not on the box they arrived in.

Thanks for stopping by!