The prank call seemed like such a good idea at the time.<\/p>\n
But then, so does almost anything when you’re sixteen years old and being mischievous. I was playing the part of Ron Rivera, mild-mannered Toyota salesman. Mr. Schorpp, a neighbor who was having a problem with\u00a0his newly bought\u00a0Toyota, was on the other line eating up my apologies and phony offers of compensation. I offered full remuneration\u00a0and\u00a0cocktails and\u00a0dinner with us and\u00a0“the wives.” In hindsight,\u00a0Mr. Schorpp must have thought it odd when Ron Rivera offered a night out at the movies. But I was sixteen, and\u00a0that seemed like a\u00a0perfect way to make up for a faulty gas gauge.<\/p>\n
Making the situation more illicit\u00a0was the fact that I was standing in the Schorpp’s\u00a0kitchen and Mrs. Schorrp\u00a0was chuckling away in the corner. She had been the instigator of the joke, though Mr. Schorpp would never believe this line of defence.<\/p>\n
As my lark continued, something began to dawn on me with growing horror – Oh my God, it’s working.The Schorpps\u00a0were my second family when I was growing up. Eddie was my best friend and partner in crime and Mrs. Schorpp\u00a0served me my second dinner every night – I now partially thank her for my current Hobbit-like habits and physique. Mr. Schorpp\u00a0was my baseball coach and the only man in the world\u00a0capable of being\u00a0more intimidating\u00a0than\u00a0Bigfoot\u00a0and Nosferatu combined, so when\u00a0he was hooked like a fish onto my\u00a0prank, I knew there’d be hell to pay. When it all ended I hung up the phone, sweating. The Schorpp’s\u00a0kitchen phone rang almost instantly, as no doubt Mr. Schorpp\u00a0wanted to tell his wife about his very odd conversation.\u00a0Mrs. Schorpp answered it, giggling like an intoxicated hyena.<\/p>\n
With all the counter-intelligence instincts of a McDonald’s Big Mac, she burst into laughter and sold me out in under three seconds. So much for that.<\/p>\n
This was twenty years ago and my first – and only – successful prank call to date. Still, the damage had been done, and Ron Rivera has since then been my Langhorne alter ego. When I come home from anywhere – college, Prague or travelling, the Schorpps ask me how Ron is doing.<\/p>\n
“Good,” I’ll say, he’s been travelling around Italy this year. I think he’s going to Korea next year for a month.”<\/p>\n
As alter egos go, Ron Rivera, Toyota salesman in Langhorne, PA, isn’t as exciting as say Superman, Batman or Robin Williams. The one and only photo I have seen of the man\u00a0perfectly\u00a0portrayed\u00a0a man named Ron Rivera,\u00a0Toyota salesman in Langhorne, PA.<\/p>\n
When I saw the Schorpps last week,\u00a0we talked in detail about Ron’s latest adventures. Since then, I’ve been\u00a0thinking about Ron and his total ignorance\u00a0of how much discussion he’s been involved in over the last twenty years. He’s been on grand adventures, has travelled around The Middle East and\u00a0India, driven around Ireland and Italy.<\/p>\n
Ron’s having a hell of a time out there.<\/p>\n
This thought made me depressed and paranoid – depressed because I wondered if Ron’s alter ego, me, is having more fun\u00a0as him\u00a0than he is. Paranoid at the thought that perhaps all of our alter egos are out there having a hell of a lot\u00a0more fun than we are.<\/p>\n
My alter\u00a0ego\u00a0probably has two girlfriends – mine and his. He probably has an exciting job – bush pilot, snake charmer or\u00a0pizza man. Maybe he’s a glove model, the son of a bitch.<\/p>\n
If he is tall, I am going to kill him.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’ll call Ron while I’m in Langhorne and fill him in on our twenty year, one-sided history. Then I’ll invite him to use my name as his alter ego for the next twenty years. It seems only fair.<\/p>\n
Who knows, he’d probably hate being me.<\/p>\n
Who is your alter ego?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The prank call seemed like such a good idea at the time. But then, so does almost anything when you’re sixteen years old and being mischievous. I was playing the part of Ron Rivera, mild-mannered Toyota salesman. Mr. Schorpp, a neighbor who was having a problem with\u00a0his newly bought\u00a0Toyota, was on the other line eating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-2O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}