I’m off from work today. Cleaning the house and doing the chorey sorts of things you do when you’re not working.

Editor/Husband is away, so apologies, in advance, for ramble-on sentences, the spirited overuse of unwords like “untrustable” and “chorey,” and excessive smugness.

Also, no baseball.

A few months ago, I chatted with a telephone scammer named Sam, who, when I asked him why he chose to be a crook, started yelling at me.  Not the road to redemption, Sam. Click here for the story of Sam and Me.

Today, the phone rang and it was Nancy!

Nancy, like Sam, wanted to help me rid myself of malicious files that were on my computer.

Oh, Nancy! How I’ve been waiting for your call.

I wasted a lot of Nancy’s time. I had her walk me through my computer and where to find certain keys on my keyboard like “Control” and the letter “R”, which she graciously did in her broken, but-better-than-Sam’s, English.

I had trouble finding the “control” key on my keyboard and she had to wait patiently while I fussed around – key by key – to find it.  “Wait, here it is. Nothing happens when I press it though. Is nothing supposed to happen, Nancy?”

This went on for almost seven minutes. (This is what happens when Editor/Husband is away and I’m trying to be tidy. I get bored with cleaning litter boxes and look for a call from someone – anyone, even a criminal – to waste some time with.)

“Nancy this isn’t working. Should I get offline? Maybe I’m messing this up. Let’s start over.”

She was getting frustrated. “You need to listen to what I tell you.”

“I am listening. Is nothing supposed to happen, when I press this, Nancy? Listen! I’m pressing it.” I put the phone up against the keyboard as I madly rattled it. I tried to sound flustered. (My performance? Brilliant.)

Nancy’s voice got edgy and she started speaking very slowly because, obviously, she was dealing with a dolt. “You need to press the control key with the other key at the exact same time. I am telling you what to do.”

“I know, Nancy, I’m sorry, I really am trying! I must be doing something wrong. Let’s go back to the ‘My Computer’ screen. I think I can figure it out from there.”

It was sort of fun, and I was just about to ask her if she knew Sam, which would lead me into the question I really wanted to ask – “How in the world did you end up in a business meant to cheat people? How did you end up a crook?”

And, then Nancy interrupted me. “I see you don’t want to cooperate so I’m going to end this call. Goodbye.”

I made a scammer hang up on me.

(Although, to her credit, she did say “goodbye.”)

This is incredibly disappointing because now Nancy, like Sam before her, has ruined my post.

According to the National Consumers League, thousands of illegal telemarketing operations, full of Nancys and Sams, are scamming in the United States every day.

They’ll keep calling and I’ll keep asking them how they got into the crookery business.

Eventually, one of them will tell me.

And, I will finally get the post I’ve been waiting for.

In the meantime, back to the litter boxes.

 Stevie says this post — and her wait for a clean litter box — has taken entirely too long.