My Crazy Parents - 3 - Russian Gangsters

Roy = My brother who lives in the Wild West of Ukraine and may or may not be juggling a few foreign girls. I really have no idea what he's up to.

MyFather - So we got some strange message left on our machine the other day....It was foreigners, Russians, or something.....they mentioned Marena or Lorena....Roy's girlfriend.....They were demanding money....It was very threatening....and very intimidating.

CaptiousNut - What!?!?!

MyFather - [Artlessly repeated the story, if you can call it that.]

CaptiousNut - WHAT!?!?!?

MyFather - [Repeated with another unintelligible version.]

CaptiousNut - Did you call Roy and ask him what it was about?

MyFather - No....that doesn't....we don't....[grunts, flails, head-shakes]

CaptiousNut - WHY NOT!?!?!?

MyFather - No....that doesn't....we don't....[grunts, flails, head-shakes]....well your mother listened to the message....we listened to it a bunch of times.....we ended up deleting it.

CaptiousNut - Let me get this straight. Your son lives in Russia (Ukraine, same sh*t), some Russian-sounding dude calls up mentioning his girlfriend BY NAME, DEMANDS MONEY, all in a threatening tone....AND, you don't even tell Roy about it, AND after a group analysis you and Mom DECIDE TO DELETE THE MESSAGE.

MyFather - Well, it was a private caller so....

CaptiousNut - WHAT?!?!? What is wrong with you people?!?!?! What is the one thing you should think of given RUSSIAN, A GIRL, A DEMAND FOR MONEY, AND A THREATENING TONE????

MyFather - Ah,....I don't know.

CaptiousNut - Are you kidding me? It starts with 'k' and ends with 'nap'. How about 'ransom', have you ever hear of that?

[Often, when teaching Prince C-Nut, I can actually see the gears in his head turn and the light click on. Here, with my father, despite my lucid lecture, it was still pretty dark in the room.]

So I went into the other room and emailed Roy; I told him to call me ASAP.

About an hour later or so I got him on the phone.



It turns out, he ordered flowers for his Natasha or whatever, paid with PayPal, but not soon after the payment was yanked back. Y'all will have to forgive Paypal if it's a little hesitant about sending money to those thievin' Ruskies. So the florist (foreign/Russian/?) probably sent out the flowers already and thought he was getting stiffed. Imagine the irony, right? He must have looked up my parents' phone number in Massachusetts and thought that was an appropriate place to leave a threatening message demanding the money.

Little did he know his pointed message was just going to get inexplicably deleted!