"Hello?" I said, picking up the phone from an unknown caller.

"We're calling about your car's extended warranty," said the robotic female voice on the other end of the phone.

"STOP CALLING ME!" I shouted to the bot who clearly couldn't hear me and didn't care. I hit "end," but wished I still had an old-fashioned phone so I could slam the receiver down with satisfaction. Not that it mattered, because the caller was a bot and they would neither be offended nor likely to call me back and say, "Ouch."

Meanwhile, the number of calls I received about my car's extended warranty was out of control. As soon as I blocked one number, they switched over to another. I couldn't not answer the phone for a variety of reasons, so I was stuck at the mercy of the extended warranty robocallers who clearly were on a mission to harass me until I bought their extended warranty, or poked my own eyes out — whichever came first.

I tried to think of what I might have done to offend the extended warranty gods. Was it because I left french fry grease on the dashboard? Or maybe because I plucked my chin hairs in the rearview mirror? Or perhaps it was because I routinely left an old cup of coffee in the cup holder for two weeks until it grew legs and could throw itself out on its own.

Wait... hold on, the phone is ringing.

"Hello?" I said, answering the phone from an unknown caller.

"We're calling about your car's extended warranty."

"Aughhhh!"

OK, back to this column. Somehow, I had gotten on the extended warranty call list and I didn't know how. At first, I felt special, like, maybe, they had chosen me, only me, because I was so funny on Facebook. Or perhaps it was because I could name all 50 states in 15 seconds. Or maybe it was because I had a cool dog who could say "hello." No, really, he can). But then I asked around and it turned out everyone I knew was getting the same calls, so that blew that theory.

Rather than focusing on why they were calling me, though, it seemed I was better off focusing on how to stop them from calling me.

I searched around but there didn't seem to be a number you could call to report "excessive extended warranty calling" or "wanton extended warranty abuse." I tried answering the calls with an air horn, but I'm pretty sure the bots didn't care, although my husband did. I tried answering a call with "GO AWAY," instead of hello, but it turned out not to be an extended warranty call, and my mother was deeply offended when I told her to go away by mistake.

And then, while I was still trying to figure out how to stop the extended warranty calls, I accidentally dropped my phone in the toilet. As I cursed and fished around for my drowned phone, I realized I had actually solved my problem.

No phone... no calls.

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

Photo credit: MelanieSchwolert at Pixabay