My past Spring Break trip was not the usual vacation for college kids. My friend Mike, along with his roommate Ethan decided to drive up to Minnesota for a few days. However, there was one particular reason we decided on Minnesota, and that was because the State of Minnesota allows people to go and gamble at casinos within the state beginning at age 18, unlike the standard age of 21 most other states have set for people to get into casinos. I had a terrible fall from grace in my first time gambling at a casino. In Minnesota, the casinos only allow to play blackjack and slot machines, and if you want to play poker or roulette, you have to play it electronically.

Since roulette and blackjack are the only two games I know how to play at casinos, I focused on playing those two along with slots. But I mostly played the virtual roulette. And on our second day at the casino, I won $400 playing virtual roulette. But I proceeded to lose a lot of that money the next day all due to a smelly man telling me that he knew of a way where I could win money on this game. I knew something bad would happen if I listened to this man, but he insisted that I follow his strategy and told me what buttons on the roulette screen, and it totally backfired because I lost so much of my money that I had won.

Since the three of us had nothing else to do on our last night in Minnesota after already having hit up the casinos too much and The Mall of America, we decided to head back to our room at The Holiday Inn in Prior Lake and just chilled for the rest of the evening. But this is where I had experienced the strangest part of the trip. I kept getting all of these strange phone calls, and it was from the man that caused me to follow his risky roulette strategy and told me that he was all of the sudden up $3,000 and if I came back to the casino, he could help me win back my money. I did not believe it was him at first, so I just hung up.

But then he kept calling me back and told me that he had now won even more money. To confirm it was this man, I asked him some simple questions about myself, and who I was with at the casino. Somehow, this man who I had just met that day was able to correctly tell me that information. But I was still a little suspicious about it all with the absence of Mike in the room during both of those calls. Nonetheless, I told Mike that we need to head back to the casino because this man was up so much money and would help me win it back.

Sure enough, he said we could go back to the casino soon, but before that could happen, I received another very strange phone call. This call came from an Indian man named Kirpal, who said he lives down the street from me. I had never met this man before, so I assumed he was just new to my neighborhood and moved in while I was away at school. But he told me that my daughter kicked his dog and now because of it, his dog has to get an operation. I initially believed he was talking about my sister kicking his dog, so I believe I tried to ask him if he was talking about my sister. Obviously, I was very confused about what was going on.

I did try to talk this out with Kirpal, but he was just enraged about his my sister hurting his dog that he said he would call the police on me and I would go to jail. I just hung up and thought this man was crazy for saying he would call the police on me and have me go to jail. If anyone deserved to go to jail, it would my sister because she was the one that had apparently injured his dog. If those calls were not strange enough, I then proceeded to receive a phone call which was absolutely frightening about a minute later. This phone call came from Special Agent Webster from the Federal Security Agency over in Washington DC. Webster informed me that since the Patriot Act was passed, their agency has had the ability to monitor electronic data for national security reasons, and he told me that his agency found a reason to monitor the Internet usage at my address.

I was trying to be professional with Webster, so I informed him that if he had any concerns about the security of the Internet usage at my house, he would have to talk with my dad about that. Nonetheless, Webster still talked to me about his concerns and told me the reason his agency was investigating people's Internet usage, and found out that somebody at my address was viewing child pornography, which is illegal to view under American laws.

I immediately freaked out once he said that. I have never in my life used the Internet for illegal activities such as watching child pornography, so I was frightened that I would have to go through battles with courts and everything just to clear myself of a crime that I didn't commit. But seconds later, I all of the sudden thought it was my dad who was viewing illegal images on the Internet. My response then was "Oh my god, is THIS what my dad does when he says he is up late at night working on his things for work and paying bills?" I was absolutely frightened at this point. There was no way I could afford seeing my father end up in jail because of a crime as disgusting as child pornography. I just told Webster to hang on for a second, in absolute fear, I frantically told Mike that the government is accusing me of having child porn on my computer.

But then he and Ethan just laughed at me and told me that all of these calls were fake. All of the calls I received came from a website called Prankowl.com, where you can send various recorded prank calls or even type in an anonymous phone number just to casually prank call another person.

The man at the casino calling me was just Mike pranking me. There was no special agent Webster or Kirpal that called me, both of those were just someone doing a recording for the website for those specific pre-recorded prank call options. Honestly, I was so relieved to that I wouldn't have to fight against the courts for a crime I didn't commit, neither would I have to worry about if my dad does absolutely disgusting things on the Internet in the middle of the night.

Since then, I have wanted to freak somebody out with the government coming after them for child pornography. I have tried various people's phone numbers in my contacts with the prank titled illegal pornography on Prankowl.com, but none of them have fallen for it yet.

Needless to say, Mike is quite somebody.