The Curious Case of Morris P. Moody

For the last two years, we’ve been getting phone calls and mail for someone called Morris P. Moody. Who is he? We do not know.

All the calls and mail come from businesses, so we suspect that there is no such person as this MPM. He has been invented, we think, by a rogue computer program, combining my name – P. Morris – with T. Middy’s real name, which is T. Moody.

One piece of mail that arrived for him was from American Express, where we’ve been customers for 15+ years.

This was not the first offer of a credit card. Because apparently, even if you don’t exist, you can get a credit card. This is America, after all.

More annoying are the calls. If I answer the phone:

Caller: Hello, Mrs. Moody!

PM: That is not my name.

Or if TM answers the phone:

Caller: Hello, Morris!

TM: That is not my name.

Sometimes I try to tell them that nobody called Morris P. Moody lives in this house. They do not care. This is an actual conversation I had a couple of weeks ago:

Caller: Is this Mrs. Moody?

PM: My name is Paula Morris.

Caller: OK – well, can I speak to Mr. Moody?

PM: Are you calling to speak to Morris P. Moody?

Caller: Yes.

PM: He does not exist. Nobody of that name lives here.

Caller: So what?

I’m not making this up. He really said “so what?” Because he knew, for sure, that someone in our household had diabetes, and he just wanted to talk to them, whatever their name was. Other times the caller thinks one of us has leukemia. I tell them that there’s nobody called Morris P. Moody, and that nobody in our house has leukemia or diabetes. They find this hard to believe. They also find it hard to believe that we’re not interested in a free vacation in Branson, Missouri.

Today I looked up the name “Tom Moody” on the White Pages web site. We’ve lived in the same house in New Orleans for six years, and our number is listed under his name in the book version of the White Pages. (Before you all start drunk-dialing us, we’re out of here in two weeks. Plus we have caller ID.)

But the Tom Moody listed for our street address is one “Thomas P. Moody” (P is not his actual middle initial) and the White Pages web site lists him as “related to” one Morris P. Moody. None of this is right. Also, his age is listed as 65+. Now, T. Middy may be Dorian Gray, but he’s not THAT old.

I’m hoping that when we leave New Orleans, we will leave Morris P. Moody and his terrible health problems behind. He gets too many phone calls. Maybe he could pay the bill?