OLD MAN'S LAMENT

I am the old man.

My lament............. all the snail mail, email, and phone calls I get trying to sucker me.

The key word is "qualify." I am told I qualify for all sorts of blessings and solutions to all my problems I do not yet have. The trick seems to be to develop a serious issue for which I can collect a free steak dinner at the Holiday Inn and the opportunity to part with some of my cash.

I have been a offered $250,000 business loan, and my credit is pre-approved. The only thing that could make some loan shark believe I was a good risk is that I have a DBA (Doing Business As) filed with our country in Texas so that I can tune a few pianos a year and pretend I am in business. My wife and I live on Social Security and a small pittance I earn on Google Adsense, as well as some gifts. 

There is NO way I could pay back a $250,000 loan before I die. Recently, the idiots raised it to $500,000. I am tempted to demand $2,000,000 minimum with payments of $20 a month. 

Then, there are the people who assure me there are 35 hearing aids waiting for the first 35 suckers who come and borrow them in Georgetown, Texas. They are assuming that since I am 74 years old I must be half deaf. Let me know if you would like one, and I will try to find the flyer I threw away.

Today, some local skunk called my phone and offered to send his security experts to case out my property and tell the Mexican Mafia where my valuables are hidden. He asked if I had a security system. I told him I did. He asked what it was named. I told him Roxie. He then threatened me that, as I lay bleeding to death from being shot by an intruder, would Roxie, my bull dog, be able to call 911 for me. I told him Roxie, the fence, my gun, and the "castle domain" law of Texas should take care of me just fine. He then hung up on me without saying good-bye. Nice people.

Also, the Neptune Society wants me to come to a dinner and hear a presentation on how much fun it is to be cremated. All this while I feast on a well done steak. This is supposed to give me peace of mind, knowing my family will be able to send off my remains to be fried in a brick oven with none of the nasty odor of the usual formaldehyde in a normal mortuary. What puzzles me is that Neptune was the god of the deep ocean. Now, if these sharks had a plan to pick up my body and drop it in the Atlantic ocean, well, that might be fun.

Online, I get this full screen pop up telling me they are from Microsoft, and they have learned that my computer has been taken over by a Chinese Communist carpet cleaner in Shanghai. I am not to close down my computer, and I am to call the phone number at once or all my kids will be born with buck teeth, and the bird of paradise will fly up my nose. They are so diligent that they make sure I cannot shut down the computer without clicking some button on their page. I have to shut down with the power button. Never click ANY LINK OR BUTTON. Crash the computer, and reboot.

I also have these helpful people who read my journal, Blessed Quietness, and they tell me they are so excited with my editorial that they read for hours and hours and miss dinner and breakfast because they cannot tear themselves away from my thrilling articles. They also tell me that several of my links are dead, and they are just sure I will be eternally grateful to them for finding this out. Like I care. The site must have fifty thousand links. Below all this blather and horse feathers they then suggest that their site and mine have so much in common that I will want to give them a link on my journal. I click their site, and it is either selling Melaluka hair shampoo, or they have a dating service with the most sexy girls in Russia. Just what a Christian journal needs.

What I have taken into consideration is the people who offer me a reverse mortgage. I am wondering about getting a reverse mortgage on Roxie's dog house. Shoot, the deal sounds great. They pay me $750 a month, and I sign over the rights to Roxie's dog house when she dies. That's a lot of doggie biscuits folks.

As usual, like you, I get offers to change all my windows, change my oil, change my web service, and change my dentist and insurance. All in all, I feel very important, what with all these nice people trying to fry me, skin me alive financially, and generally rearrange my life for me.

The moral?

DO NOT GET OLD. 

Either that, or move to Mumbai, India. There, the whole community comes out when you die, builds a huge fire in the center of town, and throws you on the fire and cheers you into eternity while banging on pots and pans and playing the sitar in three keys at once. All this free. Then, they throw your ashes into the Ganges River, and you float off to Nirvana, later to be reincarnated as the Prime Minister of India. What a deal.