pests

Do you know how a worthy national charity can fail to get even a lousy dime from a potential donor?
Ring him up on the telephone. Maybe more than once. Stop him, whatever he's doing. Then hang up before he can reach the phone.
Make him so mad he sputters.
Well, that's me, a grumpy octogenarian, and the American Heart Assn.
The scene: Early evening. I'm sitting in my big chair watching television. The phone is maybe five steps away across the room.
The phone rings. Okay. I'm on it.
While I'm hoisting my aching and protesting old hulk upright, it rings a second time. By ring three, I'm shuffling across the room.
But that's it. Dead line. No fourth ring. Somewhere a computer has hung up.
Aha, you say, so how does this smart-alecky old coot know it was the Heart Association calling? Well, from caller-identification, of course.
Some time ago I got a series of these same hang-up calls. Same source, from two different numbers, 1-866-211-1876 and 1-877-213-5046. Always three rings and out.
Caller-ID fingered the American Heart Assn.
That campaign died out, I guess, but recently it revived with a new number, 1-866-431-5121.
AHA again. Just three rings.
This time I called back and after a brief exchange with a recording got a real person on the line, a nice lady.
Well, she said, she could (and presumably would) put my number on a no-call list.
Okay. I don't know who will prevail there -- a computer-generated solicitation vs. a human-generated no-call list. Just now, while typing, I got another AHA call: this time from 1-866-211-1876. Three and out.
I guess. in a way, I may be lucky. If I didn't have caller-ID (for which I pay a fee every month), I wouldn't even know who was provoking me.
And there must be thousands of other victims out there -- aging, aching and slow, by necessity -- many of them having no way of knowing who's interrupting their lives and abruptly hanging up on them.
Sputtering.