Love From Above

“I’ve always thought that people need to feel good about themselves and I see my role as offering support to them, to provide some light along the way.” ~Leo Buscaglia

A little more than a year ago, I was running to answer the telephone. When I gazed upon the caller ID, I smiled.

It was one of my beloved friends calling. I hadn’t heard from that person in so long, that I seemed to forget the fact that just moments before I was grumbling because I had to run to answer it.

However the conversation was a little unusual. Well, to be honest it was a little unusual for me.

And at the same time it was one of the best and yet shortest telephone conversations that I would ever have.

Here is how it went:

• Me: Hello?
• Them: Hi.
• Me: Hi there.
• Them: I love you.
• Me: Well… I love you too!!!!
• Them: Bye!

And then they hung up.

A few minutes later, I read an e-mail stating that what had just happened was called “A love bomb”. You call someone up and you say to them “I love you” and then you hang up. Saying nothing more or nothing less.

A few weeks later, I attempted to return the favor. But they just would never answer their cell phone. So then finally I waited for the voice mail to kick in, and then I said “I love you” and then hung up.

Months after that, I finally had a cell phone. And I was learning the ins and outs of text messaging for the first time. I knew what their cell phone number was and I plugged it into my cell phone. Then I wrote a text message.

I didn’t write “I love you” though, instead I wrote “LOVE BOMB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and sent the text message.

I’ve never been successful to pull off the love bomb over the telephone. But I’ve left some seriously mushy text messages before to the point that they knew what I was saying and doing. 

And then I got really creative with it. I would find these manipulated photographs of hearts which went along with a bomb going off. I would take them and then post them on Facebook profiles.

Any and all photographs that were relative, I would use.

So I guess in the end that I was actually very successful in pulling it off. And I’ve been doing it ever since.

Then today, when I saw that my beloved friend was having a tough morning, I notice all of the comments that were left of people offering hugs, I dug deep and tossed them another picture of a “love bomb”. And said to them that while they were getting mobbed with hugs, I was sending LOVE FROM ABOVE.

Some call it silly, immature, and cheesy. And of course they just might be right. However, it depends on the kind of people that you are socializing with who would decide that kind of thing. And I also believe that it depends on the kind of sentiment that you are putting behind it all as to whether or not your efforts are going to waste or making an impact.

On the other side of the coin, I believe that sometimes silly, immature, and cheesy is necessary. You never know just when or how you are going to be successful in making someone’s day a lot brighter.

Dismiss nothing in life. Consider everything. And remember that you are never too old. For you may be that ray of sunshine that someone is needing.

 

There’s A Time And Place

“I’m not Mr. Debonair Suave. I’m just a regular boy who goofs around, pulls pranks, and makes jokes. That doesn’t sound very hot to me.”~ Jensen Ackles

This is probably the most disturbing story I have ever told on this blog. Mainly because it is probably the most disturbing story that I have read about in the past six months.

A woman called her husband to see if he was on his way home from work. The husband replied that he did not suspect that he would make it home for at least another hour. Disappointed because she wanted her husband home, she called him again ten minutes later, asking him to please hurry because something was going on in the house.

Twenty-five minutes later, the husband arrived home. Five minutes after he had been home it turned into a crime scene with one dead body, two injured.

Here’s the fully story of what I remembered reading:

The husband and wife were always playing pranks on one another. They had done that ever since they started dating. After a few years of marriage, the pranks continued. Some really good, others not so classic.

The wife’s desire to have her husband home was enough for her to call her husband back and pull another prank on him because she knew that it would definitely bring him back into her arms a lot sooner than an hour.

She had told him over the phone that there was a man in the house. Someone they both knew. It had been a man that had been hitting on her and flirting, even though the man knew that she was married. She told her husband that the man had come by the house and was intending on having sex with her while the husband was still an hour away from being home.

The husband believed his wife’s horrendous joke, and came home immediately. In the process he got a citation for speeding by the police. The husband however, retrieved a gun that was in the glove box of his vehicle and stormed into the house.

In a jealous rage, he shot the house up with bullet holes. Damaging and destroying a lot of their things. He stormed through the house and shot up the closet door in which he had suspected the “other man” to be hiding in. But there was nobody there.

When he couldn’t find the “other man”, the husband started to fight with his wife about her activities while he was at work. He wouldn’t listen to reason to her, so he pointed the gun at her and shot her.

After the rage had passed, the husband saw what he had done. He looked inside the closet only to find his five year old daughter laying on the floor. The bullets that he fired into the closet without aim, caused a shelf to come undone and all of the heavier contents landed on the child’s neck, breaking it.

It was the child’s special hiding place. Particularly when the husband and wife would argue and fight. She felt safe and secure inside of their bedroom closet. But it ended up not being safe at all in this case.

Then he went back and saw his wife laying there in a pool of blood and not moving. Remorse and guilt had set in, and so therefore he turned the gun on himself.

When the police arrived, the husband was dead. The wife and child would be taken to the hospital to be treated for their injuries. The child would survive her injuries and sent to live with her grandmother. The wife would become permanently disabled as a quadraplegic and unable to care for herself. When she was shot, the bullet hit her spine.

The family was torn to bits. All because the wife wanted her husband to be home sooner than later. She pulled a prank on her husband. Actually, told a lie to him in the hopes of getting him home faster. Initially one could argue that she was successful however the results of her words were harmful and deadly.

There is a time and there is a place for pranks and jokes. In this story, it was not the right time or place. It is something that is tragic and the prank should’ve never happened.

Pranks and jokes are always funny, at least when they do not happen to us. Usually when we become the victim of a joke, we don’t think it is necessarily funny when it happens. A lot of the times though we look back and think, “Okay that was kinda funny.”

If only we knew when those times were. If we think first before we react, then I believe that we can avoid having to deal with a similar situation like what happened with this family.

Yes, I know that a lot of jokes are funnier when it is done “on the spot”. But sometimes, these situations can get out of control and have the opposite reaction to what we were hoping, just to get a laugh.

Just the other day, I was a victim to a joke. It was one of those (what I call) “jumper” videos. Something that seems innocent at first, but then it suddenly something else JUMPS OUT on the screen, screaming. Yeah, I jumped so bad!!

I understand that they can be fun.

But to pull a prank on someone like that, just because you are wanting to change the fate of time? That is absolutely unnecessary.

So remember there is always a time and a place for everything. Have fun with your friends with jokes and pranks and what not, but be smart about it. If it is unsafe or at any point potentially dangerous- then you probably should pass on the prank and wait for the next opportunity to have fun at someone else’s expense.