Nice Identity: I'll Take It

On Being Scammed, Being Local, Being Published, and Being a Human Being

How a Faulty Air Pod Almost Got My Bank Account Cleared Out

My mother, some of you already know, has severe Alzheimer’s. She lives in a facility about a mile away, and I spend a good part of my time trying to help take care of her.

Recently she had a particularly bad week—one morning, she got confused and got off on the wrong floor of her assisted living, a floor under construction, and she tripped and fell, banging her nose on a door frame. I took her to the ER where they bandaged her nose and tested to rule out a brain bleed. All of this took several hours—we weren’t discharged until it was early evening. After I got mom some food and back to her AL, I drove home, emotionally drained. I knew what I really needed was to take a run. Nothing soothes my anxiety and fixes my mood better than a run.

The only problem was, my right earbud had recently malfunctioned. It’s disconcerting to hear music from only one side. Nevertheless, I was desperate. I put the stupid earbud in anyway and went for a partially unsatisfactory run, vowing to myself to get with Apple customer support ASAP and see if I could get a replacement. For a visual, here is the offending Airpod that would go on to cause such problems, on a happier day (running at my alma mater, the Univ. of Notre Dame):

The very next day, I was playing catch up after missing a day of work, so I didn’t get a chance to have the Airpod fixed. Three days later my mom was back in ER, now for a different problem, her heart.

Again I spent a scary and upsetting day in ER. Again I went home emotionally wrecked, knowing what I really needed was a run. Again I wedged the stupid single Airpod in and pounded out some of my anxiety.

The next day I was of course behind again, but I promised myself that if I was going to do a single thing for self-care, it should be getting my dang Airpod replaced.

I didn’t want to fill out a form. I wanted to talk to a Real Live Human, on the phone, and get satisfaction. I googled Apple customer support and called the 1-800 number. The agent who helped me began a claim ticket and initiated the process of replacing my Airpod, which would arrive in 3-5 days.

We were getting off the phone when she went, “Hmmmm. That’s weird.” Which has to be the #1 thing one doesn’t wish to hear from a professional of any kind. She asked me if I had authenticated a user on my account in New Mexico.

Absolutely not, I told her.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Quite.”

I could heard her keys clicking. “Oh,” she said, “Oh, no.” She sounded apologetic when she told me my account was being used by someone in New Mexico.

“Like, a hacker?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

“Well, this suspicious activity on your Bitcoin account. . .

“But —I don’t use Bitcoin—”

“You don’t do Bitcoin trading?”

“No,” I said.

“The user is trading Bitcoin through your account.” More keys clacking in the background. “And using Bitcoin for . . . an illegal activity.”

“What illegal activity?”

I could hear her exhale. “The buying and selling of child porn.”

Silence as that touched down.

She continued, “You should take action as soon as possible to protect your identity. And your various accounts. Do you do any on-line banking? Is your phone linked to any of your credit cards?”

Right around this point my husband Tommy popped his head into my office to hand me a piece of mail. I waived him in, then quickly gave him an update, telling me our Apple account was hacked but the agent was helping me.

“What do I do?” I asked the agent. “Child pornography. My God. How can I stop this? What do I do?”

”You need to put a hold on your bank account. Immediately.” She asked me my bank’s name and I gave it to her.

“I’m going to connect you with your bank’s fraud hotline. You need to tell them what happened and ask them put a hold on your account.”

She put me on hold, then transferred me to our bank, which is located right here in Oxford, MS. It’s named FNB, for “Friendly Neighborhood Bank”—aptly—we know a lot of the employees there. But didn’t recognize this gruff voice answering the phone, “FNB Bank.” He had a strong accent, maybe Indian—the Apple customer service agent did, too, but that seemed less unusual than a local banker in our Mississippi branch. I explained the problem to him, though Tommy had already given me his tilted-head-raised-eyebrows look. Then the banker asked me for my bank account and social security number.

Tommy shook his head. “Ask him if he’s here in Oxford.”

I did and the man said, with a touch of impatience, that he was.

Tommy pressed, “Ask him what he can see out the window.” We both knew exactly the view the banker would have: our town’s stately courthouse, at this time of year, decorated with lights stretching from its roof to the adjoining sides of the square, creating a snowglobe effect, as captured by my pal, the photographer Bruce Newman:

I asked, “What is your view out the window?”

“We need to get a hold on your account, fast,” he said. “Do you want to put a hold on your account or not?”

Immediately I wanted to apologize—he was helping me and I was being difficult. But not Tommy, whose Spidey Sense was tingling.

“Ask again,” said Tommy. “What does he see out the window?”

I asked again.

“What!” the banker shouted. “Do you TEST me?” He roared it. “Do you TEST me?”

“Hang up the phone!” Tommy told me. “Hang up the phone!”

The banker was still yelling when I hung up the phone.

Reader, I spent an hour (a precious hour!) an the phone with these scammers, and I almost gave them everything they needed to rob us blind. We almost had Christmas stolen as cleanly as The Grinch stole Whoville’s (though that story worked out okay, too).

In days to follow, I’d spend some time wondering how I allowed this to happen. I know that when I made this call I was more vulnerable than normal—I’d bathed my mother’s bloody face, then watched my mom’s heart stop, watched her go unresponsive. I’d had four nights of terrible sleep, stress dreams when I did sleep. And, sure, I might be a bit naive when it comes to nefarious scammers (trying to steal money from a poet seems a new low). But even so, the sophistication of the outfit was startling. I knew people could call you and try to steal your identity. But it simply never occurred to me that I’d be the one calling the scammers—that Apple (such a powerful company) would allow the first 1-800 number to come up, when you google “Apple Customer Service,” to be a fake Apple Support team, highly trained in Apple products. I marveled at the long game, how canny and well-trained the woman was, completing the repair ticket first, asking all the right questions about the malfunctioning Airpod while eliciting my address and Apple account. How kindly she she expressed her sympathy for my predicament—guessing that the thing that would be most upsetting to me would be the propagation of child porn through my Apple account.

So I put this out there as a humbling customary tale. I know you’ve heard not to give out private information on the phone—but keep in mind, you might be asked for this info by people who you reach out to in error, people who are posing as folks on your side, folks who are helping you. Double check any phone number you google to make sure that you’re really talking to the legit outfit. Don’t be rushed into precipitous action. According to NPR, phone scams last year in the U.S. reached ONE TRILLION dollars. I very nearly added to that.

And yes, I’m getting new Airpods for Christmas.

Living La Vida Local: In Praise of the Small-Town Photographer

“Go big or go home”: this most American of mantras, equating size with ambition, implies that people who remain in a small town lack the talent or chutzpah to compete on a bigger stage.

But what about the artist whose genius is local? Whose inspiration comes from the small, whose vision aligns with the particular? I mentioned above my friend Bruce Newman, a photographer for my small Mississippi town. Unlike Richard Avedon or Annie Leibovitz, photographers as famous as their subjects, Bruce disappears when he’s working. You forget he was at the back of the contentious school board meeting, the fringe of the gay pride parade, the sidelines of the AY-8 soccer match, running more than the kids to capture the best shot (I hope he wears a FitBit). You forget he was there until the next day when you see your life reflected back at you. And often, it’s a reflection from an angle you overlooked. Oxonians know the façade of Square Books well—but not upside down, in a rain puddle. The water tower that looms over town? We’d seen it every day, but never really seen it until he boxed it against a tangerine sky. We, too, have driven past the hay bales but haven’t seen them quite like Bruce did:

Bruce has been reflecting Oxonians’ lives back at them since 1986, long enough that all three of my children have had their lemonade stands featured in the paper. Above the fold.

I think about the importance of the local with writers, as well. Because sometimes I thinks—does the world really need me laboring away in my small town, does the world need more poetry, more novels, if we have Dickinson and Hemingway and Morrison, etc.? If I’m going to write, shouldn’t I at least be in Brooklyn, with the fashionable hipsters who know a secret handshake and get all the nomination-only grants (looking at you, Rome Prize, Marfa Residency)? But no, my place is here, which is valuable when this place needs a writer. A community will always need artists to reflect itself, take its photos, tell its stories. A writer invested in her community can reflect it back in a way a famous international writer never can.

I had a moving and humbling experience a few weeks ago. One of my close friends suddenly lost her son, who was in his early thirties. She asked me to write the obituary. I went to her house and got my friend, her husband, and their surviving son telling stories. I asked questions, prodded for details, got quotes. I took notes and the next day was able to pull together his obituary. In some ways, it was the hardest writing assignment I’ve ever taken on, but I felt so happy I could do this for my friend. In this one small way I could do something Hemingway, with all his talent, couldn’t do. Not all of us are going to be international jet-setters. It’s nice to remember that even humble places needs makers and dreamers, artists and poets. Sometimes I think the greatest joy available to us on earth is to be of use.

But I’m Burying the Lede

The other greates joy is being published after 7 years! This is happy face is too sedate for how I feel:

Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash

W.W. Norton has accepted my new book, The Irish Goodbye: Memoirs and Micro-Memoirs! (Those of you who took part in my Substack survey will recall my asking about this as a potential title. You were integral! Thanks for helping!)

I suppose it might seems strange that I’m so overjoyed, seeing as Norton has published my last few books. But I never took it for granted that they’d continue to do so. Publishing has changed a LOT since my first book in 2002. And I simply wasn’t sure if my editor would like this collection that includes both sections of the very short pieces (the kind that were in Heating & Cooling) interspersed with essay-length memoirs. But she did! I’m taking a breather to celebrate this before I turn my attention to revising and the other parts of the publication process.

My book won’t be published until March of 2026! Lord, that seems a long, long time. Patience is not my superpower. But anything worth publishing, I suppose, won’t have expired by then. To remind myself, here’s a little scrap of poetry, vital and vivid, and a thousand years old:

I can’t wait to share my book with you, dear Substackians!

The Writing Life is SO Glamorous

In my last newsletter, I shared my excitement over a Persian translation of the novel I co-wrote with my husband. And then came across this paperwork regarding our Korean translation. No, not a typo—our royalty statement for the year was for $6.18. If you had $6.18, what’s the most outrageous way you could imagine spending it? Please drop your suggestions in the comments and I’ll pick one and do it.

Anybody Else Love AudioBooks but Hate Amazon?

If that describes you, do you know about Libro? It’s a way you can buy audiobooks online, but the profit goes not to the Dark Lord, but to whichever indie you indicate when you sign up! I have my purchases set to benefit my lovely local, Square Books (a place, incidentally, where I am happy to go to sign and personalize any books you might want to send as gifts, etc.)

Do you choose the same books to listen to as you do to read on paper? Not me: because I’m normally listening to audio books while cooking or cleaning or driving, I know I don’t have the bandwidth for the more complicated or abstract books I might read when I can allocate 100% of my focus. (I’d never listen to poetry on audio, for example, or super-literary lyric essays). I prefer for audio books to be novels, preferably with a bit of a page-turning quality, almost always written by contemporary women. Here’s a photo, so you can see my Libro recent line up in action—

All five of these books are bangers and highly recommended to listen to while wrapping presents!

My Wish for You in Closing

Don’t you just love amaryllis? There’s such a lovely long delay between the planting and the payoff, but it’s so visual, as the green tongue emerges and reaches for the sun, every day one lick closer.

I like to buy several bulbs in October and plant them a week apart, so I always have one at peek bloom. The one on the left is perfect today. The one on the right should be perfect on Christmas.

That’s what I wish for you—may your growing conditions be favorable and your timing dead-on accurate. May you receive everything you need to bloom throughout this holiday season. May you be greatly admired.

See you in the new year, my friends! I’ll send more information then about the week- long class I’ll be teaching starting July 28 on the coast of Maine, on short-form nonfiction! Until then, Merry everything!

Remember:

The Bethannigan is free! The Bethannigan doesn’t want your money. The Bethannigan only wants your love. Praise me, pet me, share me, feed me. Take me home and tell your friends. Apparently if you like or comment below, it helps other people find The Bethannigan? Or if you have a Substack, recommend me? Do the thing! Point the way! Thanks, pals!