mailing lists & telemarketers

It's happening right now. The people who make their sorry living by barraging the world with junk mail are figuring it out. They're already on to me. Somehow, they know. I'm going to be a mother. Soon it'll arrive, the motherhood junk mail. Add it to the yoga, social justice, teaching, and writing junk mail.

Have you ever used a weird version of your name or filled out a "required field" on a form with your middle initial as "Z" or "Q" for example so that you'll be able to see if they sell your address to some other company? Then finally when the day comes and you get that envelope addressed to Doug X. Feldstein it's been too long and you have too much else in your brain and you've forgotten who would've sold your name. It's all part of their plan.

In the realm of junk mail, and let me throw in telemarketing as well, we are dealing with people who have dedicated themselves to presenting as real wildly unimportant and artificial issues – 12 magazines for a penny, free carpet cleaning, surveys on our shopping habits. I think the people who run these operations could have great success in Homeland Security. They're secretive, relentless, concerned with imaginary worlds. Someday before the 112th or the 139th Congress there'll be a pasty guy, with an overly friendly voice who's good at reading scripts being grilled about his past intentions and indiscretions before being voted in as head of HS. There will of course be a sound delay before he answers any questions, and he will return questions unanswered until the Senator gives him his daytime phone number.

Once as a college student, I had a job telemarketing for the school. Maybe people were more patient then, almost 2 decades ago. Maybe I have just never been patient. But people would talk to me. They wouldn't give me money, mind you, they'd just talk. Some would tell me in great detail why they positively couldn't or wouldn't give money to their alma mater. I got stories of car accidents, cancer treatments, foreclosures. I got raucous laughter from people who felt their educational experience was, shall we say, less than stellar. I got people who needed to tell me about their day. As long as I had a phone to my ear, my part of the deal was done. I'd get my paycheck (minus the bonuses for actually bringing in revenue). And so I let them talk. I asked them questions. They asked me some too.

They better hurry up, these junk mail fiends and wicked tyrants of phone solicitation. It's bad enough now climbing up from my spot on the floor sorting what's to be recycled in that day's mail and waddling to the phone only to be greeted with a horribly bastardized version of my name and asked how I am. Once motherhood hits my patience with them will undoubtedly be even shorter, and if they aren't careful, I'll take the time to tell them aaaaaallll about my day.