One phone call was enough to turn an ordinary workday into a nightmare. When a little girl answered the phone and said Mommy was upstairs with “Uncle Paul,” the man on the other end felt his blood run cold. There was no Uncle Paul in their family. Convinced he was catching his wife in the act, he gave the girl a cold, calculated instruction that would unleash chaos in the house.

In this dark joke that has been told for decades, he tells his supposed daughter to run upstairs, knock loudly on the bedroom door and shout, “Daddy’s car just pulled into the driveway!” The phone goes silent for a moment, then the girl returns, breathing heavily. She describes a scene of pure panic. Mommy screamed, jumped out of bed naked, tripped while running down the stairs and is now lying at the bottom, not moving at all. Uncle Paul, terrified, jumped out of the bedroom window.

The man listens, feeling a strange mix of shock and vindication, until the girl adds one final detail. Uncle Paul jumped out the window and landed straight into the empty swimming pool downstairs. There is a long, heavy pause on the line. The man’s voice changes completely. His anger disappears and is replaced by confusion. “Wait… swimming pool? We don’t have a swimming pool,” he whispers.

Suddenly, everything clicks in the worst possible way. His voice shaking, he asks, “Is this 486-5731?” The little girl on the other end replies innocently, “No, this is 486-5713.” In that instant, he realizes he has just orchestrated a complete tragedy in a stranger’s home. He has no words, no apology big enough for what he has caused. All he can manage to say before hanging up is, “Sorry, wrong number.”