When you answer your phone and a stranger who knows your name but sounds like they're pronouncing it for the first time asks you how you are and pauses just so - before launching into trying to convince you that you need to say "yes" right now to giving them money for whatever goods and services you have already been pre-approved for - what can you do to get them to hang up and leave you the hell alone without being so gauche as to actually say that? What can you do?

My mother taught me that it's not polite to hang up on someone while they're talking - so that's out. Besides, it's just not satisfyingly spiteful enough.

You can say "no" any number of times and that stranger with the headset will just keep prying, wheedling, coercing - so that won't get you anywhere either.

Cussing them out may be immediately gratifying, but mom wouldn't approve - so that's out.

So, what can you do?

Invade their privacy. They've already invaded yours, so theirs is fair game. One ploy that's worked for me lately is: "And what's your name? How should I spell that? Do you have an employee number? And what's your supervisor's name? And how should I spell that? How can I reach that person?"

I had originally intended to tell the telemarketer, at that point, that I wanted them to hang up now, but I've never got that far. About the time the person realizes that you're waiting for them to spell out their name for you, they panic, "I don't have to tell you my name!"

"You most certainly do! I do not spend my time talking to people who refuse to identify themselves!" About that time you realize you're talking to empty air.

Now that I think about it, I remember trying a similar tack when repeatedly accosted by vacuously smiling proselytizing Scientologists who wanted only to ask me five questions. I agreed to answer the five questions of one cute young woman with the stipulation that for each of her questions I would get to ask her one. My perfectly innocent though annoying questions so disconcerted her that she gave up on me and fled about halfway through the second one. And they really were innocent questions!

If you're feeling truly annoyed with strangers inquiring upon your health at dinnertime, I suppose you could try the lurid, suggestive warp: "What do you look like? What are you wearing? What color is your underwear? I'm not wearing any!" You're still on good legal footing; after all, they called you! I might not tell Mom about this one.

Get into their space. After all, they've already jumped, uninvited, into yours. Have fun with it. Get a stopwatch and see how quickly you can make them hang up. If that doesn't work, you can always break out the police whistle. Or simply tell them the name of your favorite on-line magazine.

Author Dave McBee really doesn't wear any, and would rather work for nothing, as he's doing now, than work in telemarketing.