The Charlie Charlie challenge was a game popular in the 2011-2016 era of YouTube, in which YouTubers attempted to summon and/or communicate with a demon of the same name. The game had a few variants, but most of them involved the use of #2 pencils.
I don’t know the specifics, because I never bothered with trying viral challenges like this. But my eighth grade friends knew the specifics. One day, they enacted those specifics. And I weaponized the game against them.
Let’s back up a bit.
Near the end of my eighth grade year, I was invited to a weekend camping trip to celebrate one of my friend’s birthdays. We’ll call her Betty. Also on this trip were pseudonyms Cara, McKenzie, Kelly G, and Kelley G (not confusing at all). Betty’s mom, whom we’ll call Homophobe McGee (irrelevant to the story), was our parental guardian for the camping trip.
My dad dropped me off at the McGee household, and, before taking off, was asked to fill out an emergency contact sheet. We weren’t going very far from town, but this was protocol, and I respected that.
Our first night was full of classic 2010s merriment, including learning to twerk (badly), Twister with paint, and singing “The Addams Family” musical together.
Going into the second night, Kelly G and I tried to start a fire while Homophobe McGee was at the onsite bar and the remaining girls hoped to relieve their boredom with some #2 pencils. Yes, mere feet away from me and my pathetic scraps of tinder, four middle school girls attempted the Charlie Charlie challenge.
I was still religious at the time, and so was Kelly G. We were not happy about this development. We had previously asked them more than once if they would help us with the fire, but they completely ignored us. Our anger at them could have provided sufficient fuel to our measly fire, but we were young and dumb and hadn’t gone to therapy before.
After failing to contact Charlie Charlie, the four “sinners” headed to the bar to retrieve Homophobe McGee, for reasons I must have deemed unimportant, because I don’t remember why. After they had left, I, not unlike the Grinch, had an awful idea. I had a terrible, horrible, awful idea.
“What if we made them think that Charlie Charlie had been here?”
Kelly G was on board, and thus, our destruction of the campsite commenced. Chairs went flying, burger ingredients (still in their packaging) fell in the grass, papers were littered, I took a two-pronged poker and stuck a Pringles can to the ground.
As the pièce de resistance, I located a second poker and something much more valuable than an empty Pringles can: the emergency contact sheet. I poker’d the emergency contact sheet to the ground too, and Kelly G, in her shock, said we should probably stop. So we did. And we hid in the camper and waited for them to come back.
We needed a plan. We needed given circumstances. I, as a budding actor, relished in this impromptu acting opportunity, but Kelly G was slightly more worried than I. Regardless, we thought quickly on our feet. Once the sinners came back with Homophobe McGee in tow, we suggested that Charlie Charlie had done this while Kelly G and I were hanging out in the camper.
Kelley G, the youngest and most gullible of our group, was the one to notice the impaled emergency contact sheet. This is when tears began to flow from her and at least one other girl. Somehow, Kelly G and I were able to hide our laughter behind our hands, transforming them into shocked sobs.
I knew we had to eventually tell the truth. Once the group reached almost peak hysteria, discovering overturned chairs and misplaced personal belongings, my accomplice and I laughed out loud and confessed. After all, we just wanted to scare them and teach them a lesson.
Not only should they not try potentially dangerous internet challenges, but they also shouldn’t have been ignoring their friends.
“Bitches.”
Terror turned into bitterness and, before my eyes, a faction against us was formed. Kelly G and I were labeled “bitches” and the four sinners went into the camper as a form of shunning us. Homophobe McGee reprimanded both parties and got us all to apologize to one another, but not without a phone call to each parent on Chekhov’s emergency contact sheet.
Luckily, the conflict was resolved, and the girls were able to forgive me over vegetarian burgers and s’mores later that night.
Not only was this the first time in my life I had been called a bitch, but this was also the only successful, semi-large-scale prank I’ve ever pulled. I don’t know whether I should be proud of either of these facts.