If you’re retired, you’re bound to spend some time at home and hear your phone ring frequently. Some phones have a system that identifies the caller. Most don’t.

So, you answer the phone. Or you let it ring, hoping that if it’s a friend, they will leave a message.

Sometimes out of curiosity, you pick up the phone:

“Hello, Is this Mr. Trussell” says a friendly voice. Usually, my name is mispronounced. So, I ask in return, “Who’s calling?” When they tell me, and if it is some telemarketer, I have several responses from which to choose.

Sometimes I say, “No, he’s in Timbuktu shooting wild animals.”

Then the telemarketer asks: “Well, is Mrs. Trussell in? To which I will often say, “No, she’s in jail.” That tends to throw them off their stride a bit. I then suggest that they remove our phone number from their call list because we obviously are poor prospects for whatever the telemarketer is seeking – political support or a gadget you can hang around your neck which allows you to call 911 if you feel a heart attack coming on.

Sometimes, when the phone rings, and I’m in the middle of writing an article, I reply this way to the question: “Is this Mr. Trussell? I say, “No, Mr. Trussell died. Please don’t call again.” I don’t lie because my father did die some years ago.

The caller usually says sympathetically, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and then hangs up. I hope never to hear from him again. Another response which normally ends the call quickly is: “We’re in the middle of a gang meeting. But Scarface is stomping mad and wants to know who’s calling. So, you best hang up.”

Many other answers are possible: “Sorry, I can’t talk now. The stove just caught fire” Or, “I have to hang up, the dog just ate our pet chicken and he’s choking.”

Joe Queenan recently wrote a funny piece in the Weekend Wall Street Journal about talking with telemarketers.

“Usually,” he wrote, “I let telemarketers down easily, rather than merely slamming down the phone the way so many people do.”

“I’d like to talk to the person in your office who is an expert on health care,” the caller says from a boiler-room cavern deep in the Himalayas.

“That would be Roger de La Fresnay”(a French cubist painter who died in 1925), I reply. But he’s not here right now…”

“I like that I get to interact with telemarketers on a personal level,” Queenan wrote. “Clown around, Rebuff them. “I rebuff your invitation to join you in a seminar in Totowa, N.J., with a chance of winning a trip to Hawaii… So, consider yourself rebuffed.

A rather inexperienced and timid pitchman once called Queenan to ask, if he would like to “earn 8 percent on your money.”  Queenan answered: “A paltry 8 percent additional return wouldn’t make much of a difference, I’m an heir to the von Riftenhausen fortune.” (A family with that name lived in the 16th century).

“A few weeks later, he called back. He explained that he had lost his job and wondered if he could come and work with me and manage the von Riftenhausen fortune.”

“Oh, that,” Queenan responded. “It’s gone.”

When you have nothing better to do, all sort of ridiculous games can be played with telemarketers. The difficult ones are those who ask you to hold on for a brief recorded message from a well-known person, such as Newt Gingrich or Joe Biden. Then it really may be time to slam down the phone.

Now, for the serious side: The fleecing of older Americans has become an epidemic. One out of every five 65-year-olds has been abused financially, according to a survey by the Investor Trust, a financial-education outfit. Financial abuse, much of it through phoned pitches cost seniors roughly $3 billion, said the Trust.

It’s a “big and growing problem,” according to Robert Roush, who is in charge of a geriatric center at Baylor College of Medicine. Even elders who are naïve or are without dementia can be talked into losing schemes. Only 10 percent of such frauds are reported, as estimated by investigators.

Therefore, beware of that seemingly innocent ring of the phone.

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

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