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Menacing Phone Calls I Have Received: Veterans

Sometimes threatening phone calls aren’t overtly threatening. Sometimes you might even recieve a threatening phone call which actually seems earnest,
as if the person bullying you if only trying to do the right thing, and
doesn’t even realize how much they’re annoying you.

Like,
say…oohh…constant phone calls from a charity asking for donations.
They’re a charity, so you can’t exactly scream at them over the phone
to stop calling you. Well I suppose you could but I don’t have the guts for that. For more details on this case, continue reading.

Sometimes threatening phone calls aren’t overtly threatening. Sometimes you might even recieve a threatening phone call which actually seems earnest,
as if the person bullying you if only trying to do the right thing, and
doesn’t even realize how much they’re annoying you.

Like,
say…oohh…constant phone calls from a charity asking for donations.
They’re a charity, so you can’t exactly scream at them over the phone
to stop calling you. Well I suppose you could but I don’t have the guts for that. For more details on this case, continue reading.

The Call(s)

Screaming BirdyFirst
of all, I wouldn’t categorize the calls from this organization as
“threatening” per-se. It’s more that I’m being harassed by them, but I
suppose in a stretch I could say that early-morning phone calls from
the Disabled American Veterans are a threat which constantly hangs
over my head. A man shouldn’t have to live like this.

I guess
the Disabled American Veterans is some kind of charity. They take old
stuff you have lying around and use it for something or another. Maybe
they sell it, maybe they burn it, I don’t know, and at this point I
really don’t care. What I do
know is that I’ve been getting dragged out of bed once a week for the
past year by an automated phone call featuring the chilling,
disembodied voice of “Jim” (a disabled veteran, OBVIOUSLY). Why,
friendly old Jim just wants to make sure you know that if you’ve got
any extra clothing to donate to the Disabled American Veterans, well,
you know they’d be happy as pie to take it off your hands!

My Response

So, at this point I have a few options, none of which are all that inviting. I can…

  1. Pile ClothesDo nothing. Continue to be woken up by Jim’s poorly-recorded audio guilt trip EVERY SINGLE week, for the rest of my natural life.
  2. Change my phone number. Not going to happen. I have a really good number; it’s the best I’ve ever seen. It’s a lot like 488-8888. But Better.
  3. Placate them with shoddy goods, and hope they go away. Since
    I don’t have any money or extra clothes, I could just go to the thrift
    store, buy a whole bunch of cheap crap, and give it to them. It might
    make them stop calling, but then again, they might sense my
    weakheartedness and double up on the calls in the hopes that I’ll cave
    more easily a second time (and I definitely would).

  4. Look up their number and give them a call. When
    the old woman who works the phones answered I could say something like,
    “Uhh, hi, you keep asking me to help the disabled veterans and I don’t
    really WANT to, so can you just go ahead take me off your list? …
    Yes, certainly ma’am. Yes I realize I’m a horrible person.”

    Then
    I’ll go sit and play a videogame I just spent 60 dollars on while
    having visions of some legless old man in a tattered army coat pulling
    himself around on a scooter during an ice storm I’d end up swinging
    from the rafters before the night was through.

Was I Afraid?

Dark DoorDamn right! Still am in fact. Sometimes I wake up with a start. Sweating. Listening.
Scraaaapeee.
Scrrraaaaappee.
At
the front door… My imagination? A treebranch in the wind? Or a
hook, tracing glyphs into painted metal. I pull the blankets over my
head. I cover my ears, pulling my legs in close. But still, there, deep
under the covers, through my hands and through the ever quickening
 thrum of my heartbeat…it is there still.
Scrrrraapeeee.
Scrrrappppe.

Final Score

If it’s fear-mongering and emotional blackmail you require, look no further than the The Disabled American Veterans!

10/10 Pumpkins

P.S. I apologize for this article.