supposedly clever or funny messages. The most famous of these attempts is the “Nobody’s home” message set to the opening of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Or there was the borderline rap version with lyrics such as, “You gotta leave your name/gotta leave your number/gotta WAIT FOR THE BEEP!” The tape, which also included a Boogie Woogie and Can-Can number, had a total of seven different messages for only $14.95 (plus $3 shipping and handling, of course). Erik and I refused to allow others to make such messages for us, so we created our own including musicallyenhanced versions. Erik played guitar, and he could create most of the tracks we needed; however, rather than using a well-known song, Erik would play guitar riffs of his creation, and I would do something in the background to go along with it. Such an approach led to our other most popular message, one that came because we had run out of ideas completely, but we knew we needed a new message. Given our personalities, Erik often played the straight man to my more manic personality, something any student on such a small campus would know about both of us. In this message, we played the music Erik had created, and he did the main narration. 99
He began, “You have reached romper room number 107...” while I was in the background running around the room, creating as much chaos as I could; I turned the TV and other music on and off while trying to quite literally bounce off the walls. As he continued, “Our current residents are currently occupied and cannot come to the phone, but please leave a message...” I began bouncing on and off my bed, leading to our grand finale. As he wrapped up the part about leaving a message, I leapt off a chair onto his bed, shouting “Sky King!” which turned into a repeated “ing, ing, ing, ing” as I bounced until I stopped, and he shut off the recorder. I realize as I write this out there’s no way to communicate how much fun this was to create or why anybody found it interesting, but both are true. Over the next few days, while we were in class, people kept calling and calling. One aspect of this period strikes me as particularly odd though. While people would comment on our messages when they saw us, or we would hear comments through the grapevine, nobody would ever leave a message commenting on our messages. Thus, we would get back to find hangups on the machine or only find out
