Legend of Bubba

The following is true tale of the best prank that has ever been played on me. I will start from the beginning so everyone can get an idea of who the players were and why this prank happened.

One spring day in 2003 my university of Guelph roommate, Robin Bourke, came home from the library and showed myself and my other roommate, T-Bone, a note he discovered on his books upon returning from a study break in the library.  The note said something on the lines of “Hi, my name in Lindsay. I am in your biology class and I think you’re cute.  If you’re interested in getting together to study give me a call at 837-5309.”  T-Bone took it upon himself to remember the number in the hopes that I put it to good use.  I brought the number over to our Aussie student-exchange friend, Jimbo, as he loves to prank call people.  (Side note:  When Jimbo first arrived in Guelph he heard about buying a bike at a police auction and he asked us if we knew anything, we didn’t and told him to call the station, he asked for the number, so we told him “911”, the operator was not pleased).  Jimbo was a master of voices and had fooled many people from the track team in the year he was here so I thought he was the man for the job.  He dialed the number and then all of a sudden threw the phone over to me and insisted that “she’ll detect the accent, mate”.  So there I was on the phone, talking to some girl in Robin’s class impersonating Robin.  “Ya, I’m so smart babe… I’m an engineer for crying out loud,…I know everything… I pretty much rule because I’m amazing… if you ever need anything explained I’m your man, babe … etc etc.”  I pretty much acted like a total show-off and all around knob.

Apparently that call was enough to break the ice as the girl came up to Robin and struck up a conversation in class.  Needless to say there was an awkward couple of minutes until Robin figured out she had talked to “him” on the phone the other evening.  Right away he asked Jimbo about the call and sure enough Jimbo told him that I had indeed talked to her.  Robin made sure I didn’t know that he figured out what happened as he was planning his revenge…

Two weeks later I came home and saw this big blasphemous picture of me up on our fridge.  I knew exactly what picture it had originally come from as it had “All-Canadian” written across the bottom…. 

COPY #2 written across the top in marker?!!  If this is copy #2 then where is copy #1?!!  I had a good idea since the original picture is up in the foyer of the Athletic Centre.  So I got on my bike and raced to the AC.  Got inside, looked up, wasn’t there!  Phewww that would have been embarrassing.  I felt the need to get in touch with Robin as I thought the picture on the fridge was hilarious and he fooled me into believing he had put it up in the AC.  Upon entering the computer lab in the main Library I saw one of the screens had the doctored picture set as the background and as I moved to change it I noticed all the screens had the pic.  My face turned bright red I got the heck out of there as fast as I could!

Was there a Copy #1 you ask?  Well there was.  And it was right where I thought I was going to see it except it had already been taken down and replaced with the original by the afternoon.  Early that morning Robin had taken the original down, scanned it, lengthened my forehead, turned up my nose, enlarged my lower lip, crossed an eye and inflated an ear and then put “Bubba” back up on the wall.  All with the help of Jimbo, of course.  The doctored picture was nicknamed Bubba courtesy of the swollen lower lip.  The hideous picture was put up in the foyer of the AC right before 300 people entered to write a final exam in the main gym.  My picture happens to sit right above one of the three turnstiles and apparently everyone was pointing and laughing upon entering the AC and that’s how the assistant director noticed it.  She brought the picture to the attention of the Athletic Director and my coach who both laughed upon seeing it and could not take the Assistant seriously.  Then the AD asked my coach if I would be offended and my coach replied “you’re talking about an athlete who just lit a bag of dog poo on his teammate’s porch the other night. No.” 

And that is the legend of Bubba.