How it All Began

 After I signed off last night, I remembered the name of that fake company, it was "Cardholder Services".   I looked it up and found this about them.

Cardholder services: Is it a scam? | CreditCards.com

Apparently, they are still in business, at least somebody using their name is.  We first started getting calls from them some time after we moved here, so it must have been in this century.  They would start out with a recorded message that offered to connect you to a live person if you would press "1".  We just hung up on them at first, but they were calling so often that I decided to press"1" so I could tell them that they were wasting their time with us because we didn't have any credit cards.  The live person would usually promise to remove our number from their list, but they would continue to call us, sometimes that very day.

 I started to get creative after a while, coming up with all kinds of ways to engage them and waste their time.  This too got old because I was wasting my time as well as theirs, and they would hang up on me as soon as they could tell I was toying with them.  I decided I would rather be the one to hang up first, so I began quoting a line from an old "Peanuts" comic strip, "Shut up and leave me alone!" before hanging up on them.  I don't remember when I started adding that elephant insult at the end, possibly it was because they kept calling us in spite of my admonition.  Looking back on it, it didn't discourage them from calling us, but it made me feel better because I was doing something to retaliate instead of being a passive victim.  So yes, I have certainly learned my lesson.   Although it makes me a little sad to give up one of the few pleasures I have left in my old age, it's just not worth it.  The risk outweighs any benefit I might derive from the practice.

Thanks for the information about candidate Kennedy.  He seems like a regular guy, and I might vote for him now that I know that.  On the other hand, my most important priority is to keep Trump out of the White House, and voting for Harris is probably the best way to do that.  Well, I've still got three months to make up my mind.