I found an old photo of a couple kids and realized that one of them kind of looked like a friend. I decided to prank him big time; I wrote a letter to him on an old typewriter pretending to be some third-rate Southern lawyer telling him that he was actually adopted, and the photo was proof and also included his brother whom he had never met, “Doug.” The yarn spun out wilder and wilder, about his alcoholic mother who had tried to sell the boys for beer money and was forced to give them up for adoption, and how she was just now getting her life together and wanted to see him again.

I let him in on the joke after a couple weeks and he was like OH MY GOD, THAT WAS YOU? He had actually called his mother to ask if it was true he was adopted.