My Ninety-Two-Year-Old Mother Takes on a Scammer

My ninety-two-year-old mom just took on a scammer. No longer driving and quarantining against the virus, she’s safe and snug at home. Except there’s the internet, which she doesn’t completely understand. There’s Zoom, which she’s trying to learn. And the telephone.

Yesterday, it was the telephone. When it rang, she had been tending to skinned knees and bruised hands, having just fallen while putting her garden to bed for the winter. But she pulled herself out of her chair and answered the telephone.

“Hi, Grandma,” said a voice. “This is your oldest grandchild.”

Only it didn’t sound like her oldest grandchild.

“What’s your name,” my mom asked the voice.

“Mike,” he said.

“You are not my oldest grandson,” my mom said. “And you should not talk like this.”

I would have hung up by this point, but my mom wasn’t finished.

“Let me pray for you,” she said.

As she told me this, I could picture her tightly-closed eyes and her brows in deep concentration.

“God,” she said, “I pray for this one. Help him to repent and follow you. I ask in Jesus’ name.”

And when she finished, the scammer had only one word to say: Amen.