Adventures in Telemarketing

So, there I was sitting at the dinner table, eating my fried oysters the other evening when out of the blue this guy with a foreign accent phones me and asks to speak to my brother. He asked for my brother by name. I knew immediately that this was some sort of sales call. My brother, who used to live with me, for some reason, is on every telemarketing list in this country and, evidently, in several other countries, as well.
When I told the gentleman that my brother didn't live here, he apologized (the caller, not my brother) and said he was looking for the homeowner. "What!" I cried. "Are you telling me my brother has stolen my home from me now? Is there no end to his cruelty?"
"No, sir," the polite telemarketer said. "I got my information from a data base It must be in error."
"Then it must be true," I corrected him, wailing pathetically into the phone. "My brother has somehow gotten his name on the title to my house."
"I was just trying to reach the homeowner," the salesman explained.
"Well, if my brother is the homeowner, then I'm going to have to get a lawyer and go to court."
"I don't know anything about that," the man who called and interrupted my dininer was explaining.
"You're going to have to come and be a witness for me when I take my brother to court?" I told the nice man.
"I am calling from India," he said, as if somehow that was enough for me not to demand he appear in court in my behalf.
"What!" I shreiked again. I shreik a lot. "How can someone in India know about my brother stealing my home and here I am in Richmond and I hadn't heard about it."
"But sir," he tried to explain, "I'm just calling from a data base.
"Well, I guess I'm going to have to subpoena that data base," I said. I went on to explain to the guy that I watched a lot of Law and Order on TV and that from what I'd learned from that show, I could subpoena his preciosus data base. I'm not sure if I could or not, but since I was making the whole thing up, it seemed like the right thing to say.
I asked the man if he watched Law and Order. I was going to ask him which version of the show he liked best, but he pretended not to know what I was talking about.
He did stammer and apologize quite a bit. Finally, as if to make me think he was sorry he had disturbed me, he said he would hang up and never call my number again.
You'd think that would make me happy. But, I think I'm really going to miss the little fellow.