Such a missed opportunity

I should find more podcasts to listen to.

As long as they’re around an hour, they can get me through most if not all of my drive home, and I don’t have to fiddle with my music or the shows on the radio if what’s playing doesn’t do it for me right then.

I can just ride and enjoy.

However, my podcast listening is basically one-offs that seem interesting, which is how my drive home from New Hampshire was accompanied by Daniel Ricciardo on Armchair Expert.

It wasn’t so much Dax Shepard — who, by the way, I didn’t even know was the host until about a half-hour into the show — and Monica Padman interviewing Ricciardo as much as telling stories about hanging out with him and then him eventually getting a chance to share recollections of those capers, but at least most of the stories were funny.

And then about five minutes from home, with about 20 minutes left in the podcast, my phone rang.

It wasn’t one of the regular callers whose names I have in my phone — parents, Suzi, boss, pharmacist (for a prescription I picked up last week) — but because I have trouble just letting calls go to voicemail, I hit the button to answer … hands-free and safe, of course.

It was some kind of survey.

I really thought they stopped doing this.

I tried to politely tell the seemingly very nice woman that no, I wasn’t interested.

She kept going.

No, really, I’m just not interested. I may have been slightly less polite by this point.

“Your opinion is very important to us.”

And … hit the button to hang up.

How stupid of me! She said my opinion was very important to them, and I didn’t even stick around to ask the topic was!

What if she wanted to know my thoughts on various genres of art, including the Impressionism of Monet’s “Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, Le Havre,” which is at the top of this post?

Sure, there are actual art experts she could have consulted, but we all know the perspective of “things that look real are good and modern art sucks” in academic discussion of art is criminally underrepresented.

And I hung up on that opportunity.

When I got home, I even saw on my listings the name of the person who called.

Scam Likely.

I don’t know why Mr. and Mrs. Likely would name their kid Scam, but she probably got enough crap growing up without my hanging up on her for seeking an opinion on something so culturally important.

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