Saga of Bill Overdue

“I’m home,” I called as I entered the house. “Come help with the groceries.”
“Shhh,” my son greeted me. He motioned across the room where his friend was spelling out our address over the phone.
“What’s he doing?” I hissed, setting the bag of groceries on the table beside a pile of magazines and ads for computers, services, accessories and information.
“We are calling up companies offering free stuff diskettes about computers and telling them to send it here to ‘Bill Overdue’” my son said in a low voice. About then, his friend hung up chortling, “This is so funny. No one has said anything about the name. They just ask how to spell it and take down whatever spelling I come up with.”
They laughed and started to paw through their collection of advertisements looking for another place to call until I reminded them of the groceries.
Because all of the calls were to 800 numbers I never did find out how many phone calls they made for Bill Overdue asking for free information. I do know that for the next couple of years, Bill Overdue got everything except dunning notices for not paying his bills.
Initially, the mailbox was filled with a variety of brochures, fliers and sample diskettes from the places the guys had called. They sampled computer programs and rearranged the diskettes for personal use. Through Bill’s benevolent sharing of his mail, they found out about the most recent developments in technology and games.
When his friend could not visit and check out Bill’s mail, my son would gather up bill’s current haul and take it to school to share. The young technophiles relished the bargains on computer equipment and magazines that flowed through our mailbox.
The flood of mail in response to their calls had begun to slacken as their requests were fulfilled, when the advertiser began selling old Bill’s name to advertisers in similar fields. Bill Overdue was invited to join international computer information systems. He was offered samples of a variety of magazines, bargains on computers and computer programs on credit, all with no concern for his source of funds. His original inquiry along with an address, first and last name were sufficient reason for competitors to send more mail. Eventually he had enough mail to fill up a paper grocery bag.
Long before the avalanche of mail ended, the two friends graduated and went off to college, leaving me to collect bill Overdue’s mail.
Slowly, his interests have expanded. In recognition of his growing need for more funds to support his technological hobby, Bill Overdue recently received an offer for his very own credit card, with a credit line of up to $3,000, depending on how his application cleared his credit card referrals.
Because of his incriminating last name and lack of Social Security number, we have forbidden him to apply. Except for those two things, we would probably have a credit card, too.