“I’m now obliged to drop everything and call about this great blessing I’ve missed out on by playing hard-to-get all these months. O wretched, unworthy schmuck that I am!”

On any given day, someone, somewhere is trying to contact me.
Check this out: I receive a plain postcard in the mail. I recognize it because I’ve received the same card several times already. The message on the back is handwritten to make it appear personal… although anybody with the IQ of a pin cushion knows the sender penned the message once, then reproduced it several billion times.
It begins: “I’ve been unable to reach you concerning a free gift,” and provides a 1-800 number for me to call for more information.
You’ve no doubt received similar come-ons in the mail, perhaps the very one I’ve just described. For starters, no one has ever called me or my wife, nor left a message on our answering machine, informing us about a free gift, not this month, this year, nor any other time. If someone had, we would know it. The sender presumes that I’m so abysmally simple as to believe some unselfish Samaritan, a complete stranger, took the time and trouble to locate poor, li’l ol’ me, first by phone, then by mail, for the sole purpose of giving me—giving me—a FREE GIFT! Bless his altruistic heart!
And because he’s been so gosh-darn gracious, and obviously expects nothing in return, I’m now obliged to drop everything and call about this great blessing I’ve missed out on by playing hard-to-get all these months. O wretched, unworthy schmuck that I am!
I’ve seen thousands of these cards pass through the postal facility where I work: identical handwriting, same “personal” message. Apparently, my wife and I aren’t the only people in the Monterey-Salinas area whom this mysterious humanitarian has been trying desperately to contact. I can only imagine how many of these industrially replicated postcards he (and/or his company) crank out and mail nationwide, every day. Poor guy! He’s got all this goodwill he’s dying to share with people, and elusive ingrates like me make life so difficult for him!
How is that every other jackass in the world is able to reach us by phone whenever he wants to… except this guy? What exactly is his problem? Does he not know how to use a phone? It couldn’t be the guy’s nervous about imposing on people, could it? Nobody else seems to be.
Most solicitors think nothing of barging in on me or my wife any damned time of the day or night they please, including weekends and holidays. Doesn’t matter if we’re sleeping, watching a movie, eating dinner, or taking a dump. They ring our phone and expect us to jump like a couple of salivating mutts to answer it. Seems that “normal business hours” only apply when we’re the ones doing the calling. People certainly know how to make themselves unavailable when we need to reach them.
Makes me want to grab this postcard guy by the throat—assuming there’s a sentient being behind the message—and shout: “You liar! You have NOT been ‘unable’ to reach me. You reached me! As for this precious freebie you’re dangling before me… you and I both know it isn’t really ‘free.’ I gotta buy or subscribe to something I don’t want in order to receive it. Probably some cheap, useless crap you can’t sell, which you yourself would toss in the trash if someone sent it to you. I’ve been around this block before, and countless others just like it, and there are clowns like you on every corner.”
Years earlier, another solicitor did manage to get through by phone, not once, but three or four different times, to offer us a special deal on his carpet-cleaning service. Each time, the first words out of his mouth were, “I’ve been trying to reach you.” Was that ever a giveaway! The guy wasn’t even clever enough to disguise his voice, make it sound as if a different pest was trying to reach me. Or at least vary his opening line, so I wouldn’t suspect he was reading the same material he’d used the last time he called, and the time before that. I could almost hear him turning the pages!
If there’s anything I hate more than nuisance calls, it’s being lied to—especially by the same nuisance, over and over again. “Trying to reach you” must be one of those classic icebreakers marketers have been using since forever… supposed to open doors, generate sales, and put them on the fast track to financial independence, early retirement, a house in Florida… the whole the kit and caboodle.
Mr. Carpet Guy was evidently coached in this technique, as were legions of schleps before him. Flatter every prospect into thinking you went through a lot of trouble to find him. Always address the person by name—it’s okay if you mutilate it (like “Garg-ee-uh-lee-uh”), because that makes him feel important. Play to his ego, treat him like he’s SOMEBODY, and you’ll have the bird eating out of your hands, guaranteed. Well, that horse poop doesn’t fly with me. All it does is prove how much of a nobody I really am in their eyes.
Unlike my wife, who usually lets a junk caller finish his opening monologue before politely declining his offer (What a sweetheart!), I refuse to indulge these people, or engage them in conversation.
The lady cannot be rude to anybody. I can. And if I didn’t so despise talking on the phone, I’d have given Mr. Carpet Man a few lines that weren’t in his script: “So you’ve been trying and trying and trying to reach me, have you? Guess what? You dialed my number, and I answered. Bingo, you reached me! How difficult was that? Not to mention the fact that you pulled this same lame stunt several times already. You ring my phone, I pick it up, I say, ‘Hello.’ You state your business, I say, ‘Take a hike!’ and I hang up. That’s how it works.
“Next month, your sponsor hands you a new contact sheet containing most of the same numbers that were on the previous one, and we run through this routine all over again. Maybe you’re hoping my memory is as brief as yours, that I won’t recognize your squeaky little voice on the other end, parroting your lines like the obedient schnook your company took you for when they tutored you in the fine art of wooing fools and irritating people. Frankly, I’d rather let my neighbor’s dog pee on my carpet than trust someone like you to clean it!
“You think I’m so shallow, I can’t tell when someone’s yanking my chain? You rehash the same patronizing drivel you dished out last time you tried so hard to reach me—same as you hand to every other ‘special’ person on your various lists. You lie to me, then you expect me to do business with you? Well, son, I’ve got a message for you, same as it was the last time you came scratching at my door. I’ll give you a clue: It begins with N and ends with O. And if you have trouble processing that, then maybe you’re the one who can’t be reached!”
Okay, I realize it’s pointless to take these intrusions personally. And that’s precisely the point. Marketing is essentially impersonal. That, I can live with. What burns my gizzard, though, is the presumption of familiarity with which total strangers try to lure me into their confidence for the sole purpose of selling me something… coming on to me as though I were a long, sought-after buddy, when in fact they don’t know me from the crack they’re sitting on.
Why is it I so rarely hear from people I want to hear from?
As a writer, I’ve invested years of my life, pouring my heart out into my stories and essays. I want people to know who I am, not what I represent. I reach out to strangers and friends alike, invite them to sample my work, to visit my website, to embrace that better part of what I’ve chosen, in good faith, to reveal of myself. I feel special when folks express enthusiasm for what I’ve written, when they tell me my words have touched them, made them laugh, kept them up nights. Would that I could have as much success connecting with the right individuals, as the wrong ones seem to have connecting with me.
Case in point. About four to five years ago, I began writing a blog on a popular site, hoping it would generate interest in my writing, perhaps draw people to my own website. Almost immediately, a blog-surfer posted a comment on one of my entries. “I really dig your blog!” was how it started out. Naturally, I assumed she was responding to something I wrote. I thought: Wow! Someone in Cyberland appreciates my work, thinks I’m special, and wants to correspond and swap blogs with me! That’s what the person, or entity behind the username, evidently wanted me to believe.
Really had me going for awhile… until I clicked on the return link. Turned out, my would-be admirer had duped me into visiting a commercial website in order to interest me in some product or commercial enterprise she was involved in. I can’t believe I fell for it!
Pitching, pitching, pitching! Someone’s always pitching something at me!
More comments followed, different user names, all saying pretty much the same thing. “Loved your blog!… Blogs are so cool….” etc. A clear and present pattern began to emerge. These fan letters were nothing more than ploys to recruit unsuspecting bloggers into business ventures. None of them had anything to do with my blog. I doubt anybody even looked at what I’d written.
It became increasingly apparent, the more of these teasers I received, that the solicitors had all been tutored by the same source, and sent these letters to everybody. They were, in fact, no less common or deceitful than all the other marketers who keep trying to reach me. I swear, these bozos must all eat from the same trough.
I wrote personal emails to a couple of my “followers,” telling them what I thought of their scheme. No one responded, which didn’t surprise me. Guess these suck-ups didn’t find me so terribly interesting anymore.
I finally figured out how to activate the spam filter, so that I’d receive only legitimate feedback from legitimate visitors. Once I did that, all comments ceased. So much for feeling special. I suppose a few real people could have visited my blog and not told me. No matter… I removed it.
Let me tell you what I told my wife, who could not understand why she kept receiving so many emails promoting male enhancement. “Don’t these people know me?”
Not only do they not know you, I said, they DON’T CARE who you are. What you have or haven’t got between your legs doesn’t interest them… anymore than the contents between my ears interested my fellow bloggers.
Half the time, it doesn’t even matter what websites we’ve visited. You and I are but a few bits in someone’s database, a set of buttons hucksters and spam marketers push whenever it suits them. We receive junk emails for the same reason we receive junk phone calls: Our info is online. If your kitchen were connected to the Internet, they’d send the same message to your toaster.
Me, I’m but a hoot in the wilderness, a writer without a gimmick, who delights in a spiritual commodity no merchandiser can offer.
So, for all you spiritual Fools out there, whoever you are, I’ll conclude by saying you are cordially invited, not obligated, to visit my site. If you do stop by, feel free to drop a line. I’d appreciate knowing you were there. Like what you see? I’d welcome the feedback. Got some constructive remarks regarding something I’ve written or produced? I’m all ears.
All I ask is this: If you’ve neither seen my site, nor care to do so, please don’t lie and say that you have… or tell me you “dig” it if you don’t. Above all, if you have something to sell me, would you do me a favor? Keep it to yourself.
For once, it would be nice to know that a real somebody has found the real Ted for a change.
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Ted Gargiulo’s stories and essays have appeared in The San Jose Mercury News, The Monterey County Herald, Wilde Times, The Gamut, and The Fringe. Born in New York City, the former stage actor and prize-winning author now lives with his wife in Seaside, California. Ted is currently working on a collection of short stories. He In Me, available from PublishAmerica, is his first published novel.