Posted by:
RPackham
(
)
Date: April 23, 2017 05:15PM
I wrote this a couple of years ago for my Sunday column in the local newspaper:
========
The phone rang the other morning, so I answered it, as I usually do. "Hello?" I said.
There was a pause, then a young man's voice said, "Hello, Grandpa!"
I didn't recognize the voice. I have eight grandsons, ranging in age from 35 to 10. The voice sounded like he was in his 20s. I had no way of telling which grandson it was. I rarely have the chance talk to them on the telephone. I naturally wanted to know which grandson I was talking to. "Well, hi! Nice of you to call. Who is this?"
"It's your favorite grandson," he said.
"C'mon," I said. "I don't have a favorite grandson. I love you all the same. Which one are you?"
"I'm the best-looking one," he said.
"Really, all the Packham grandsons are good-looking. You need to tell me who you are!"
Long pause. Then click. He hung up.
I told my wife I had just had a really strange phone call, and repeated the whole thing for her. She reminded me that my brother-in-law had gotten a similar call a few years ago. He has only one grandson, so when the voice said, "Hello, Grandpa!" he naturally answered, "Is this Karl?" "Yeah," the voice said. "It's Karl, and I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm in trouble." He went on to say that he had gone to Mexico on a lark and got arrested. He was in jail and had no money, and he needed $500 to pay a Mexican lawyer to get him out of jail. And please send it right away.
"Gee, Karl, I haven't got that kind of money. I don't know what to tell you. Can I do anything else?"
"You can't send the money?" "No, I can't. I'm sorry." Click.
At first I was a little bit proud that my grandson didn't ask me for money because he had irritated some Mexican cop. But then I realized that he had hung up before he got that far. Maybe he really was in a Mexican jail, and was just too proud to be begging for money from me, knowing how stingy I am. I was all ready to try to trace the call to find out what kind of trouble he was in, and which grandson it was, when my wife said, "It's just a scam! That wasn't your grandson, and the other caller wasn't Karl. It's just another form of the Nigerian bank account scam!"
Now, I admit that I am sometimes too gullible, and that sometimes my wife is too skeptical, but I had to admit that she was probably right on this one. I should have been suspicious when he wouldn't give me his name. He wouldn't because he couldn't. He didn't know the names of any of my grandsons.
Next time he gets in trouble and calls me, I'll make him tell me his mother's birthday, or else I'll just let him rot in that jail. That's no way to treat your grandfather.