Homeowners Gotta Start Younger Every Year

My youngest sister is ten years younger than me, and even though we have her phone number — and ours, too, for that matter, not that it works — on the do-not-call registry, we still have cases of spam and telemarketers trying to call her. Usually, if we see it is an unsaved number, one of us — me, our other sister who is only two years younger than me, or our mom — grabs it and if it does turn out to be telemarketing, tells them off.

At this time, the sister in question is twelve years old and has a friend over. Both have their phones in the living room and are playing in her room.

I hear buzzing and try to figure out which phone before I call the wrong kid, find it’s my sister’s, and call her, but I decide to answer her phone regardless to tell them she’s coming because it had been going off for a while before I found it. I see the number on the screen is unknown, unsaved, and answered.

“Hello?”

A male voice says, “Hello?”

I ask, “Who is this?”

He then says his name and starts saying something about being with a group that is supposed to help homeowners; he is kind of hard to understand. But I do hear “homeowner” and cut him off as my sister and her friend get to the living room. I am stern, but I try not to be an a**hole because I work in retail and know how it can be, even if these guys do usually have it coming.

“This is my twelve-year-old sister’s phone. Put this number on your do-not-call list.”

There is kind of a long pause and I expect him to just hang up like they usually do when pausing this long after hearing that. But then he asks, “All right. Is there a homeowner available, then?”

I’m still being firm because I want to get him off the phone. “No, there isn’t.”

He was already getting a tone the last time he spoke, but now he goes into full-blown attitude and sarcasm. “Ohhh, so a twelve-year-old girl lives by herself, then?”

I am completely caught off guard and now I’m pissed and put more of a tone in my voice. “I never said she lives in her own. I said that the homeowner is not available!”  

He then hangs up.

But seriously, how does it click in someone’s mind that when I say a homeowner is not available that I am automatically trying to tell them a twelve-year-old kid lives by themselves and therefore I am lying to them? Excuse me? Obviously, either the parent is not around, or we rent and the landlord, ergo homeowner, is not around. Seriously.