Pranks are Fun Until Someone Gets Harmed

We all played pranks, but most of us grew out of it.

I participated in a ding dong ditch mission or two back in my day. And I was an accessory once to calling the grocery store and asking if they had Prince Albert in a can.

The person who answered the phone actually fell for it, which baffles me to this day.

The best one we ever did was the time we called the city softball complex one night and asked for Eddie Van Halen.

In all my life, few moments have energized me as much as running back outside to hear, “Eddie Van Halen, you have a telephone call at the concession stand,” over the loudspeaker in the distance.

If you can believe it, one of the world’s greatest guitarists wasn’t in attendance that night.

An organization I am associated with was recently the victim of a prank, but there wasn’t anything innocent about it.

One of my little side jobs is helping to run a farmers market which occurs weekly on the lawn where our businesses are.

I won’t explain how this came to be because it’s not important, and you don’t care.

It’s not technically a job I don’t guess, because a job usually means that the person doing said job receives some sort of compensation. My duties pretty much consist of hammering the big farmers market flag in the ground by the street and carrying stuff up there.

I do now, however, fully understand what the term sweat equity means. It was 157 degrees last Thursday. And while I don’t do much, merely existing in that kind of heat is pretty much a miserable situation regardless of how big the shade trees are.

But it’s fun, and it’s good for the community, so it’s all worth it in the end.

Of course though, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Last week, someone gave the market’s Facebook page a one-star review and said she wouldn’t recommend it.

I was stunned. Then, I did some online sleuthing.

This person’s online profile says she is a digital content creator at Meta, Facebook’s parent company. She’s worked there 10 whole days.

Yeah, right.

I’m sorry, hon, but you’ve got to pass a whole bunch of farmers markets between Palo Alto, Calif., and here. I don’t think many people are believing you.

Of course, I can’t erase the review. I replied to it, telling people it was a spam account. And I reported it, but I’m pretty sure checking that out isn’t on Zuckerberg’s to-do list or anything. It’s just out there, forever.

I’m in a bad mood in general over some of the headlines in the past couple of weeks, but it just stinks that a person can just lie about anything and that lie will live on in perpetuity for anyone and everyone on planet earth to see.

I merely want to know why someone would do this. And I really want to know how she, he, it, whatever, found our little-old Facebook page and why — oh, my goodness why — would that person make something up and post it.

I guess it’s just the 2020s equivalent of playing a prank.

But no part of it was all in good fun.