Whooping Cranes In Da House!

Most of this story takes place many years ago, when I was still a teenager, and my cousin the BFG was only 8 or 9 years old. (He's an adult now and 6'3".)

His dad, my uncle, (known in this post as "U.K.") owns a business, and had just bought new office & warehouse property. So the BFG and I were wandering around the offices while U.K. was off doing business type stuff somewhere. It must have been a Saturday or on a weekday after 5 pm, because there was no one around. 

Suddenly I had an idea about how we could have some fun. In the main part of the office building, there is a long hallway with lots of offices on each side, and at the far end you turn a corner, and there's door which leads outside. The BFG and I had been hanging out near the front end of this hallway, so I very casually wandered away, stepped unnoticed into one of the side offices, and very loudly shouted, "WHOOOOOOOP!  WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!" Then I went running out into the hallway towards where I'd left the BFG. "Hey, did you hear that?!? There's a whooping crane in the building!! Let's see if we can catch him!" The BFG's eyes are wide as saucers and he takes off running.

I follow him and point to the first office, "I think the whooping crane is in there!" So the BFG runs into the office, I sprint further down the hall, duck into another office and shout "WHOOP-WHOOP!!" Back into the hallway, "Hey, it's down here now!" The BFG comes tearing into the hallway, and down to the new office. As soon as he goes in, I'm off towards the corner at the end of the hallway. I go around, open the door that leads outside, shout "WHOOOOOOP! WHOOOOOOOOOP-WHOOP!" and allow the door to slam loudly. I go back around the corner to find the BFG running towards me as fast as he can. I say, "It got outside, we missed it." 

The BFG runs to the door, opens it, looks around outside, and then comes back to me disappointed and pensive. Finally he looked up at me and asked with absolute seriousness, "Iziezi, was there really a whooping crane?"  The look on his face as he asked was so wonderful and touching, 100% absolute certainty that he'd just been duped and 100% hope beyond hope that there actually was a whooping crane. 

I said, "Yes, BFG, there really was a whooping crane. WHOOP!"  

Fast forward to today. We are both adults now, my uncle still owns the business, it's still in the same office building, I've been working there for about a year and a half, and the BFG just started a couple of weeks ago with the idea of perhaps taking over the business from his father in time.

Last week, as I walked by the BFG's new office, I paused just before I got to his door and said, "WHOOP!" 

Without missing a beat, he said, "Nice try."  

I said, "It was supposed to be funny."

He said, "At least you admit it was you!"

I said, "You already knew it was me."

And so now, whenever we pass each other's desks, one of us always says "Whoop!" and the other will answer "Whoop-Whoop!" back. All the other employees look at us as if we're nuts. =D 

It's all good, it's still a fairly small office (21 employees total) and we're all more or less friends there.