My dad got harassed by a scam artist today and it sent him to the hospital. He’s okay but he’s so old they want to understandably keep him under observation overnight.
I think they scoped him out on his way to the bank on Larchmont. He likes to park on the side streets in order to give him a bit of walking exercise. He did his business and when he came back a man confronted him saying he had hit his car and demanded his car insurance information, which my dad agreed to, even though he knew he didn’t hit his car. But the guy went berserk and wanted to “forget the whole thing” if my dad gave him cash money. He wanted about a hundred dollars and my dad was like, “NO”. He kept screaming frantically until the amount came down to twenty dollars, but my dad had nothing on him.
My dad is tough. He screamed his head off at me like never before last Christmas Eve when he kicked me out of the house, but he was perfectly fine the next day :) But this must have been scary. You never know what people are capable of and this guy was clearly desperate as he discovered there was no luck in spooking my old man into giving him money. But not too long after my dad came home he complained of chest pains, and my mother called the hospital where they suggested he come in to get checked. Of course when they arrived, my dad told my mother she could go home and he would take the bus back when they were done, because he’s crazy like that. This is the man who thought he had heartburn all day when it was actually a heart attack. They ain’t all like the collapsing people in the movies…
Los Angeles is changing. When I was living there last, I was harassed constantly in supermarket parking lots by women, which never happened before. The same story: my keys are locked in my car, which is out of gas, and my cell phone is in there, and by the way, my mother is sick from cancer and I was on my way to help her…” At first I offered a cell phone, believing the story, but she refused and her story got more convoluted. After the second time I got confronted, I knew that something was going on. The only thing that changed was the mother’s illness. People are desperate. This burgeoning scam artist scene is evidence of a broke ass economy, which I think is going to get worse, and a pit of a city.
I was pretty sure my dad would be okay since he had a clean bill of health always from the doctors. He was in good health this morning, laughing his head off watching Laurel and Hardy, according to my mother. Until some jerk asshole had to fuck his shit up. Don’t these people have parents? Grandparents? Would they like some stranger to scream at them in the street for money they don’t have? I do understand that during these hard times, old people are an easy target, but, man, people are stupid. Jerks. Assholes.
1 year ago