Battlefield: Mirth.

When I was a senior in high school and my friend Jenipher was a bored freshman at the University of Georgia, she used to send me interesting clippings from The Red & Black in the mail. She knew that I was interested in journalism, so she would send me the most ridiculous articles from the student paper, which I later worked for, in hope that she could improve my journalism skills.

At one point, she found this classified ad in the paper from the Eva Gabor Wig Company and sent it to me, complete with the attached note: "Have already sent them your address. Expect something soon."



Thus, on the day I graduated high school, a catalog of nicely-styled, silver wigs for women arrived in my mailbox. Since it was the day of my graduation, of course, my entire extended family saw the thing.

"Ooh, you should seriously forward that to your grandmother," my mother said. "The ones she wears aren't nearly as nice."

(A side note, someone recently saw a photo of that grandmother standing with my parents. They asked me how my parents knew Andy Warhol.)

I called Jenipher and laughed about it, telling her that it was a pretty good joke, but I also intended to one day get back at her for leading strangers to think I had some creepy fetish involving elderly women's wigs.

One day, while browsing through the library, I found a pamphlet and questionnaire that I thought Jenipher might find interesting, but I knew she would never fill the survey out herself. It was on Dianetics.

So I answered the questions for her and sent it, complete with her name, address and phone number, to the local Scientology Research Center.

Within weeks from arriving home from Athens, Jenipher received several phone calls from an L. Ron Hubbard-esque guru named Yogi. Seriously, Yogi would call Jenipher's house night after night to tell her all about how Scientology believes that energy waves communicated by aliens traveled through the ground into each human soul - or some such thing.

After about a month, the calls finally stopped, but Jenipher still says that I took that joke too far. But I still think it was funny.