There are a lot of annoying people in the world, but as we all know some of the worst are those telemarketers who target you with incessant sales pitches, usually at the most inconvenient times.
Recently, the calls began picking up in frequency at my house, where due to reasons of neighborhood cell tower scarcity we still maintain an old-fashioned land line. Alas, the reason was that my 65th birthday was approaching, which meant I would be eligible for Medicare. So everyone was trying to help the soon-to-be-senior citizen, particularly insurance companies who have been ripping me off for the last 45 years who suddenly have my best interests at heart and want to assure me they will inexpensively fill in the gaps in my coverage that Medicare won’t cover.
Then there were all the experts who wanted to help walk me step by step through the complicated process of applying for Medicare (how generous of them, I thought, to offer their expertise to me; I wondered if there would be some slight service charge).
It turned out that I was able to navigate Medicare without any telemarketing assistance, and all those calls ultimately stopped after my birthday. But now that I am an authentic, government-approved senior citizen, I worry that I will now be targeted by other, less scrupulous callers who think I will be easy pickings because of my declining brain functions (I readily admit those functions may be in decline, but for reasons other than advancing age).
For instance, it used to be you could tell it was a sales call by caller ID identifying it as a 1-800 type number. But now they have this scam going where they have fake numbers; it started with it being local numbers, so you would think it was some friend whose number you didn’t recognize. Then it escalated into the time I checked the caller ID and saw that somehow I seemed to be calling myself, since the phone had my name and number as the caller. Really? How is this even possible? Or legal?
The second time it happened, I picked up the phone (I’m of two minds about answering telemarketers and robocallers; on the one hand I’ve read that you should not answer and they’ll think the number is invalid, but my wife believes that I should answer and that if I ask politely to remove our number from their call list they will do so. Sometimes I wonder if my wife also believes in unicorns that fart rainbows out their asses. But don’t tell her I said that.) and said, “Hi! Is this me? Or is it I?”
Sadly, I heard only a pause, then the dial tone. I’m not sure, existentially, what exactly that means.