Senior Moment

Despite having reached an age that most would regard as being quite old, I cannot say that I am always cognisant of that fact, although my awareness of my old age does return swiftly whenever I find myself beset by the aches and pains that seem to accompany the arrival of old age. However, I have always convinced myself that whilst as an old man I might be more feeble now in body, my mind remains as agile as it ever was in my youth, - as evidenced, for example, by my considerable ability to solve Soduku puzzles and my still undiminished facility to recite poems that I had learned as a schoolboy. Indeed, like some keep-fit fanatic submitting his body to tortuous exercise, I tend to subject my mind to some energetic mental exercises such as reciting the 75 times table, - which, as countless devotees of “Countdown” will no doubt vouch for, is extremely useful with the show’s numbers game. Sadly, I have discovered that even meticulous care and painstaking nurturing of one’s mental faculties is no safeguard against the mind’s susceptibility to the sporadic stupidity that the ageing process engenders. One such episode of stupidity occurred to me recently when I tried to leave an underground car park in Walthamstow. It was early morning, - about seven o’clock, and the timing of the occurrence, - the early hour, may well have had some significance for the lack of rapidity with which my mind reacted on that occasion. I offer this as an excuse because there is, I believe, a theory that holds that the human mind tends to react rather lethargically to events in the wee small hours of the morning. Indeed it is this theory apparently, that underlies the police practice of staging early morning arrests, predicated as they are on the belief that the pre-dawn lethargy of the human mind makes it less likely to be disposed to offering resistance to arresting officers. At any rate, my mind was not disposed that morning to offering any resistance to the vagaries of technology that confronted me, even though they amounted to nothing more than a malfunction of an automatic door, in an underground car park. At that time of the morning, the car park was virtually deserted, as I parked my car and walked up to the exit that led to the street above. The exit was clearly marked “automatic doors” and on approaching it, I fully expected the doors to part before me like some biblical sea before fleeing Israelites but to my surprise they remained unyielding. It was annoying and it might have been tempting to blame modern technology. However, I am not as cynical about the efficiency of modern British engineering as many people these days affect to be. I therefore attributed this system failure, perhaps somewhat charitably, not to poor engineering but to a possible cost-cutting measure instituted by a parsimonious local council, whereby the automatic functionality of the doors was switched off outside of normal working hours. Undaunted, I made every effort to open the door manually but no amount of pushing at the door was of any avail: it remained firmly shut. Somewhat disappointed, I turned round to try and find another door that I could use to let myself out and as I did so, noticed a young girl walking in my direction. To my alarm, this young girl appeared to be heading for the same door that I had just tried and found wanting. Normally, as an old man I would be wary of accosting young girls but on this occasion my sense of civic responsibility welled up in me. In a display of public-spiritedness, I assumed my most polite manner as the girl approached and announced to her that the door that she was about to use “was not working”. The girl’s immediate reaction surprised and delighted me, - because she responded to my pronouncement with the sweetest smile that I could possibly have encountered from a stranger. To my dismay however, she seemed to take no notice of my warning about the problematic door. Charmed as I was by her smile, I could not help entertaining the uncharitable thought that this girl was so full of youthful confidence that she could not be bothered with good advice that was not only well intentioned but would soon prove to be to her clear advantage. Like some wise old sage about to prove the sceptics wrong, I waited with smug expectation to see the girl make a fool of herself. But my smugness turned the next instant to acute embarrassment when I saw to my mortification that the girl, far from being thwarted by the door, had sailed right through it by the simple expedient of pulling it open rather than pushing it shut, - as I had been doing. I stood open mouthed in grudging admiration, marvelling at this young girl’s mental alertness which enabled her to make light of a situation that had confounded me and which now made me feel feeble minded. Why, like her, hadn’t I thought to pull the door when pushing it did not work? Why wasn’t I sufficiently compos mentis to cope with this most unchallenging of situations? Slowly, the realisation came upon me that that my mental faculties for all their daily exercise had not overcome the perennial problem of age related stupidity, known euphemistically as a “senior moment”.

Beware Card Fraud - It Can Make a Fool of You

Life often has a disconcerting habit of making a person feel a fool just as he is beginning to think that he is being smart. I was a victim of this cruel propensity of life quite recently, although thankfully in my case, the experience, far from leaving me scarred, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the narrative below reveals. About a fortnight ago, quite unexpectedly, I received an unsolicited phone call, purportedly from my credit card provider. I had compelling reasons to believe that it was a purported, as opposed to a genuine call from my card provider, for reasons that I am about to explain. I am a septuagenarian, – at an age at which an old man’s mind apparently acquires a child-like gullibility that makes him an easy prey for tricksters and fraudsters. Friends and relations, with my best interest at heart, are constantly warning me of some diabolical swindle or the other, that they have heard of, that is targeted especially at unwary senior citizens. One such swindle that has been brought to my attention concerns credit card fraud. The intended victim of this fraud receives an unsolicited phone call, supposedly from the fraud prevention department of his credit card provider. The caller informs him that some fraudulent transactions, involving his credit card, have been detected and advises him to phone immediately, the emergency number shown on his card. The devilish part of this fraud is that although the victim phones the correct helpdesk number, - as shown on his card, he in fact ends up speaking to the fraudsters. Extraordinary as this may seem, this remarkable feat is easily achieved, allegedly, by the simple expedient of the fraudster’s continuing to remain on the line at his end and thus intercepting any subsequent call that the victim may make from his phone, - including the call to the card provider’s helpdesk. Having thus intercepted the victim’s call and duped him into believing that he is speaking to his card provider’s helpdesk, the fraudsters then inveigle from him, the card number and the pin details and use the information to make fraudulent transactions, - which now are of course actual as opposed to the fictitious ones used initially as a pretext for calling the victim. All of this detail, in this frightening scenario, had been firmly implanted in my mind by well-wishers, with an admonition not to allow myself to be caught out as other slow witted pensioners had been hitherto. Despite being thus forewarned, I was totally unprepared for the unsolicited phone call that I received one morning and heard the dread words that announced that the caller was from my card provider and that there had been a fraudulent transaction on my card. Although I recognised this to be the opening gambit of the diabolical fraud that I had been warned of, I could scarcely believe that I was actually being ensnared by it. Like many an optimist, I had imagined that the law of averages would somehow ensure that I would be amongst the numerous who on the balance of probabilities could expect to remain untouched by this unwelcome event. It was therefore a disappointment, that my justifiable optimism had not been rewarded. The laws of probability had clearly not worked in my favour but it was no use pondering over the vagaries of probability theory. Undeterred, I rose to the occasion and with great presence of mind informed the would-be fraudster that I was “right in the middle of something” and would he therefore call later. Congratulating myself as I put the phone down on having skilfully warded off an attempted fraud, I allowed myself a moment of triumphalism: these fraudsters would have to get up very early indeed to catch me out! But my elation did not last long and soon gave way to alarm as events began rapidly to take on a sinister turn. Having cut short the warning call that I had just received, I was keenly aware that I needed quickly to contact my card provider, to ascertain whether or not the call had been authentic. But mindful of the warning that the telephone must not be used on such occasions, to avoid being intercepted by the fraudsters, I rushed to my mobile to contact my card provider, - only to discover that someone had already placed an ominous message there, asking me to phone my card provider. This was now becoming a worryingly fiendish episode. Not only were the fraudsters lying in wait for me on my landline but they had also sealed off my only other avenue of help, - my mobile. For a moment I seriously contemplated going straight to the police but it so happened that I had a previous engagement to attend, - the computer class for senior citizens where I tutor. Reluctantly I decided that for the moment I had no option but to defer contacting my card provider until later. As events were to prove, that was the most sensible decision on my part that morning. For as I went to my local supermarket after my computer class and tried to pay for my shopping with my credit card, I found that it was no longer valid. This was an embarrassing development but it occurred to me that it could scarcely have been engineered by the fraudsters. They would have wanted to use the card, albeit unauthorisedly, but would not have sought to block it from use. Rather perplexed, I went home to phone the card company. By now the house phone, some four hours after the initial call from the people whom I had assumed to be fraudsters, should have unblocked itself and be available for normal communication. My inquiry at the card provider’s helpdesk, after the usual security related questions, brought forth an immediate explanation of the morning’s events. “We tried to contact you contact this morning, Mr. Keskar” the girl at the helpdesk informed me, “we were expecting your call, did you get our text ?”. It then transpired that my card had indeed been used for fraudulent transactions in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, of all places. In consequence, the card had been cancelled. As is normal in such circumstances, my card provider did not hold me liable for these transactions and asked me simply to await the issue of a new card. That the prospect of being a fraud victim had been averted, was indeed a great relief. But it was at the same time curiously disappointing, that what had appeared earlier in the morning to have all the appearance of becoming a drama, should have ended in such an anticlimactic fashion. There was really no fraud after all, - at least none associated with the phone call that I had received that morning. I had not acted with great presence of mind. Rather, I had been tilting at windmills. Fired by the tales of fraud that I had been subjected to, my wild imagination had conjured up villainy where none existed. In reality the fate of being the victim of a vicious phone scam had not befallen me, - nor had I been the plucky victim who had fought back. My ego, which had begun to inflate itself with the thought of having turned the tables on some despicable fraudsters, was rudely pricked. There was ultimately nothing to boast about in what I had done, and certainly no danger of resting on my laurels after a great triumph. There remained only the realisation that I had narrowly escaped making a fool of myself, - which I certainly would have done, had I gone to the police that morning as I had intended.