So I was sitting here a few minutes ago, trying to figure out what to write about here today. I was going to write about how Mattea Roach, the 23-year-old lady who won 23 times in a row on Jeopardy! was finally defeated last Friday evening. She played the game about as well as it could be played and seemed delightful and humble to most of us…but somehow aroused a lot of anger from anti-social people on social media. People were saying they didn't like her hand gestures, which of course is a perfectly logical reason to hate someone you've never met.
I'm being sarcastic obviously. I think some people were angry because she was young, some because she was female, some because she's openly gay and some because she reminded them of that stuck-up girl back in high school who was smarter than they were. There's a lot of envy and resentment on the Internet, often badly disguised with silly reasons.
But my pal Ken Levine wrote at length about this yesterday so I was trying to think what else I could write about when the phone rang…
As longtime followers of this here blog may recall, I used to get a dozen calls a day from contractors who wanted me to engage them to do work on my house. Actually, some of them were people who said they were contractors but weren't…hired by some sort of agency that makes calls trying to drum up work for contractors. I was on some sort of list and for months and the calls just wouldn't stop — until finally, they stopped. For the most part.
I answered the phone, thinking it would be someone wanting me to cast my ballot for someone in the current election here in California. Instead, it was a man who addressed me by name and told me he was a neighbor of mine. He told me the address…and if he lived at that address, he'd be a neighbor of mine except that there is no such address. He obviously had mine and he subtracted 150 from my house number and said that was his address. Then…
HIM: I met you last year. My son and I came by and introduced ourselves. We're contractors and…
ME: Gee, I don't remember that…
HIM: You were very nice to us and you said that you might have some work you wanted to do around May of this year…
ME: Gee, I have no memory whatsoever of meeting any contractors on my block.
HIM: We had just done some work on the house directly across the street from yours and the man there told us you might be interested.
ME: Across the street from me? What was the man's name?
HIM: I don't recall it at the moment.
ME: Well, there's no house with the address you gave me and said was yours. Are you even a real contractor?
I didn't get the answer to my question because that's when he hung up on me. I just sat here wondering, "Does that ever work? Do people really hire a contractor based on a pitch like that?" And lately every time I wonder about something like that, I look at the news and some of the ridiculous things that some people believe and I have my answer.