MONEY TO BURN? CALL 1-900-GET-A-LIFE

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I want you all to listen to me very carefully. If any of you out there are thinking about picking up the phone and dialing a 900 number, stop it. Stop it now. You are smarter than that.

There are three major types of 900 numbers. The first type is 900 numbers of an adult variety, which, if you are calling those, you have probably worked it out so that you grab that phone bill out of the mailbox before your wife sees it. If you are dialing these, you know you shouldn’t be, so let your paranoia and guilt be your punishment. That and a $600 phone bill.

I know first hand that calls to adult 900 numbers can be pricey. I was fresh out of college, working for a company that paid wages that would have appalled Kathie Lee Gifford. Money was tight, so I made a point of being fiscally responsible. Checking my phone bill, I noticed that it was a little steeper than usual. As I looked down the calls, I began scratching my head, not recalling knowing anyone in the Bahamas. I called the phone company, and they told me that about two hours of calls had been made to these adult lines. I informed them that (a) I was just above the poverty line and barely could afford food, much less sex over the telephone and (b) the calls were made at around 2 p.m. on a weekday, a time at which I was at work. The phone company didn’t have an answer for me. (The main reason they didn’t have an answer was because, at peak rage level, I screamed, "I WAS AT WORK!!! DO YOU THINK MY DOG MADE THESE CALLS, YOU MORON?") Eventually, the phone company took the charges off, but they did it in a manner that really made it seem like they didn’t believe me, which irked me even more.

So, the moral of the story is...uh...I forget. Anyway, the second type of 900 number is the telephone poll, usually run at the end of one of those newsmagazines. No offense to any of you who may participate in these, but this is pure taxation on idiocy. Why in the world would you pay money just to register your opinion with A Current Affair? And the topics they have you vote on are so ridiculous, it makes it even more of a head-scratcher:

"Thanks for watching. We’d like to know your opinion on one of our stories. We told you earlier about a kitty that was rescued from the top of a tall tree by a fireman in Utica, NY. We want to know your opinion. If you feel the fireman did the right thing, call 1-900-U-SUCKER. If you think the fireman should have let the kitty stay there, and go actually fight fires, call 1-900-LIKE WE CARE. You must be 18 to call, so make sure your parents are out of the room when you call. And don’t worry about getting caught. Dad will just think it’s one of his 900 calls. Believe us -- Mom will never see the phone bill."

The final type of 900 number is the biggest puzzler to me -- psychic hotlines. Recently, a Los Angeles woman named Cheryl Burnham was fired from her job and sentenced to 30 days in jail for making 2,500 calls on office phones, racking up a phone bill of $120,000.

I know that many of you feel like you need guidance in life. But I gotta tell you -- psychologists are a lot cheaper than this. And what in the world are you asking 2,500 times? I can see somebody maybe calling once or twice because they have money to burn and can’t find any charities willing to accept it. But calling these people to ask about dating, money, family, work or whatever makes about as much sense as calling Mike Tyson to ask about anger management.

These people aren’t psychic. They probably can’t even spell psychic. They are getting paid $5.25 an hour to tell you what you want to hear. They really don’t know that you and Donnie are having problems, and that he is seeing someone on the side, and that you’re expecting a baby, but it’s Ronnie’s, not Donnie’s. They could be reading a summary of last week’s Days of our Lives, and some people are so desperate to believe in this garbage that they will say, "You know what? You’re right! I do have a friend named Marlena who was possessed, and Roman did get killed off! Well, not exactly that, but close enough where I’ll call back!" (So I used to watch Days. Sue me. I was in college, and my class schedule allowed for it.)

People -- you’re smarter than this. Don’t dial the 900 numbers. If nothing else, do it because $2.95 a minute can be put to a lot more productive things. Like helping Cheryl Burnham pay off her phone bill.

E-mail me at mwg1234@yahoo.com. E-mails are just $2.95 for the first minute, $1.95 for each additional minute.