So I am sure that most of you have gotten or continue to get unwelcome texts phishing for personal info, usually with a link they’d hope you would click on that tells you that you have an unclaimed package at the UPS Store or that your checking or credit card account has detected a problem or that you have been flagged for national security concerns with your recent combination of purchases at Stop & Shop of cold cuts, lettuce, mayo, red onions, a specialty bread from the far end of the store and 50 bags of fertilizer that, if put together in just the right combination, could help you make a really nice sandwich, or possibly build a bomb (with a snack now for this build in a dark one workbench single lamplit smoky overstuffed ashtrays basement).
Usually just texting STOP can be enough to make this current text go away, well, until the next one. “we regret to inform you that your father’s estate …” “your Walmart account that you don’t have is due to expire …” “this is Discover card and, dude, you bought that? Oh, that is SOOO NOT your look. Just confirming your order … please contact us here”
But I have this recurring one, texts that will hit me every few months and always with very new personal attempts to engage in an “aren’t you?” kinda way and always with a few pics of the same pretty young woman in various situations to attest to …
“Waiting for you at the restaurant, hope you get here soon, I ordered the wine.”
“Little Millie (holding dog) misses you, how about we go to the park?”
“Jenny told me to get in touch with you.”
And this recurring one hit me with a new attempt today.
“Hi, are you the yoga teacher that Stephen referred me to?”
Now, this one made me laugh, for obvious reasons. One, though it did get my name right, was of the wrong person unless there are two Stephens in this new story and Two, if so? Seems no one in this phishing-land machine is actually doing their homework, no, they’re just being lazy.
A teacher? C’mon, I ain’t no teacher of things.
The yoga though? That almost got me, as that is actually a daily practice of mine, right after waking up bleary eyed from another night of shitty sleep and gingerly placing a sleeping blind cat to my left and saying “good morning” to a not blind cat in a computer chair and to some spider plants in a window (It’s important to talk to them) so I can curse to my legs slowly dragged over the side of the bed with said bleary eyes faced in my hands to then get my day started with some yoga. Yeah, they got me pegged. Maybe they ARE doing their homework.
I responded with “Seriously? Stop now, lose this # … I have some yoga to practice”
This was followed with “Sorry for the intrusion.”
I responded then, trying to be kind, “All good” thinking maybe this might be done, again, for now.
But alas …
“I think it was God’s plan for us to meet”
My response was an exclamation akin to a mom and a trucker and a “if this were God’s plan, that would only confirm that he is certainly dead if the best I could do to meet someone was through a phishing text from an imaginary woman who gets to the restaurant first to confidently order wine for the both of us, has a little dog named Millie and a friend named Jenny who apparently knows me. Now please, just go away … again” and then I got this.
“I practice going to aerial yoga”
Whoa! Hot damn!! Stop the phishing presses!! Aerial yoga?!?! I don’t even know what the hell that is but it certainly changes the whole dynamic of this thing now doesn’t it, she being all limber and as adventurous as aerial yoga sounds? Interest suddenly piqued!
Now I do feel bad for the poor girl who’s images have been stolen for this one of many phishing expeditions we all come across. I’m sure, as I see the pictures attempting to lure me, that she’s very nice, she and her little dog too, that she lives in a nice part of town, maybe even upscale in a fancy loft apartment of those fantastical loft apartments in TV shows or movies that no one really lives in in the real world, and certainly not worthy of that character from whatever show or movie you are watching, has a very satisfactory or even exceptional life with a good job, where she jogs to the gym and eats well and has friends who play board games every first Friday of the month with a lot of good play “Hurrahs!” but all while not knowing that someone keeps sending me a her, that maybe she even experiences the same phishing thing on her end (though I truly hope it doesn’t come with pictures of me in return … no one wants that, seriously, no one wants that, plus that would just be really weird and come with a Twilight Zoney sounding music bed).
No.
Note to surely nice young woman who keeps being sent my way every couple of months? Apologies.
I am, though, still curious about this whole aerial yoga thing. You don’t by any chance know anything about that do you?
Just askin’.
(Extra Note: As I wrote this, I got another text, though from a new number “Hi, are you the yoga teacher who introduced Stephen to me?” Seems it’s still a story of two Stephens, though slightly turned. I kinda want to meet the other one now. Maybe he knows the girl in the pictures from that non-existent loft apartment. I mean, I’m sure she is really nice).
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