Telemarketers Save Moms Sanity

Why is it that when you want to talk on the phone, the kids show up in droves and make enough noise to drown out a marching band but when a telemarketer calls not one child can be found?

Ten minutes into the call a child strolls by. You motion fervently for him to start squawking and a miracle happens. He starts to get along with his brother who also happens to enter the room and then the two proceed to be nice to each other and share.

“Start bickering!” you whisper harshly at them so you have a good excuse to get off the phone quickly. They give you blank stares as if chaos and calamity are foreign concepts to them.

To encourage them you toss one child a cookie and ignore the other, hoping they will go at one another’s throats and provide you with a great excuse to get off the phone. Amazingly, they split it evenly in half. So an idea begins to form. You realize now that you will never get off the phone and will end up sending the Society to Stop Some Abomination a check for fifty dollars, but you’re on to something.

What if you pretend to be speaking to a telemarketer the next time the kids start bickering? You can call yourself by using your cell phone to dial your landline. Then, you can sit there looking bored out of your mind and desperate whenever the kids start at it. The trick is to look like you want to get off the phone as soon as possible.

These are the machinations of a mother gone truly mad.

He stole my car!

I did not!

Give it back!

Rrrring! Hello? Firefighters For Smokey The Bears Retirement Fund? Can I send you $100? And suddenly peace descends on your household.

It’s either that (pulling a ruse the children might see through especially if the catch you with two phones in your hands) or signing yourself up to be called by as many telemarketers, pollsters and solicitors as possible. Do you think they actually have lists with times of day to call haggard moms? If not, what if we started one? I could post it on the Jelly Mom website.

Free phone numbers for people too cheap to pay for advertising. Just call these numbers and make your pitch, PLEASE. I know I could really use a call just before all the kids arrive home, hungry and raring to pick an argument. They’d come home, see me with a phone stuck to my ear and my eyes rolled back, not saying anything, and they’d tip-toe about hushing one another.

At last, there’s a reason to welcome calls from hell.

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