Telemarketers serve as alarms

After several hours of class, I climb into bed for a mid-afternoon nap. On occasions like these, I have drifted off into slumber amidst the sounds of mowers muffled through my closed window (sometimes sacrificing a cool breeze), the humming of a vacuum or even the random shout of a hallmate. All this I could overcome to play catch-up on a couple hours of sleep or grab an infamous "power nap" to make it through the rest of the day.

I see a nap as a blissful escape from the day's realities: the test I've just taken that I feel like I failed, a project/homework that I still haven't finished, the drama that seems to encompass my life and so many other various things that I stress over. While I may lose sleep over these worries at night and be awoken oh-too-soon by the oh-so-painful buzzer of my alarm clock in the morning, the days have a funny way of becoming overwhelming after just a few hours of consciousness and I find myself in dire need to forget it all.

So I nap, searching for serenity and ignoring the dull roar of my surroundings, but then my recurring living nightmare is all I find. It starts off in my dreams as distorted bells ringing or some other noise until it becomes so prevalent and persistent that I realize in reality that the phone's ringing. Is it a friend? A family member? I'm compelled to pick up the phone; the call might be important.

"Hello?" I would say, groggy and rubbing my eyes.

"Hello, is Su-sanne there?"

Oh, no! It's a telemarketer. I know because all my friends call me Suzie, and anybody I know who doesn't at least says "Suzanne" right instead of this terrible cross of Suzanne and Susan.

The first time, I politely reply, "Yes, this is she," and the telemarketer proceeds to try and sell me a credit card.

"No thank you, I'm not interested. Please take me off your calling list." She replies, "Thank you for your time," or some other polite formality.

I climb back into bed and think nothing of it. However, a few days later I'm napping again when the phone rings.

"Hello, is Su-sanne there?"

Am I dreaming? Unfortunately, no, and this time I'm a little more upset at being woken from my peaceful slumber; I skip straight to telling her I'm not interested and to take me off the list. The calls continued on like this to the point where the woman would just hang up on me when I asked her not to call back.

Sometimes the woman would try and convince me I needed a credit card. She asked me if I was a student at Georgia Tech (how did she know?); it wasn't enough for her to know my name. As if the repeated calls weren't enough to bother me, I think I truly started to lose my sanity after coming back to my dorm one day and listening to my answering machine.

"Hello, is Su-sanne there?" Click.

I wish I could say that it was some cruel joke that my friends played on me, but no, the same woman who called me every day left a message on my answering machine like she was talking to me. There are two reasons why she would have gotten the answering machine: I was either 1.) screening my phone calls because a telemarketer keeps calling me, in which case I'm not going to magically change my mind and want a credit card, or 2.) actually not there, in which case I actually could not pick up the phone in the event the message did magically change my mind and I wanted a credit card.

After several weeks, I was losing sleep and turning paranoid and delusional. One night, the phone rang at 4 a.m. and I was convinced it was the telemarketer (If she and her kind could call on a Saturday, why not in the middle of the night?). Seriously though, what was the point of her wasting my time and hers?

I started telling everybody about how the telemarketers stopped calling at dinner and called during my naptime instead. One day, though, an end was in sight. The telemarketer called and I requested as always to be removed from the calling list. To my amazement, she said she would take me off the list. I was free! I could barely contain my excitement. An hour or so later after sharing the news with those familiar with my telemarketer situation, the phone rang; it was the telemarketer asking for my roommate. I just couldn't win.

For those who share in my misery, go to www.donotcall.gov and register your phone number. I found out too late for myself, but if a telemarketer calls a number that is registered, the company he or she is working for may be fined.