Aging parents and awareness of possible scams.

Recently, it was quite something to see my (aging) mother in action, when she said out of the blue that she had mailed me a check for my birthday.

First, I've told her multiple times never to mail me money or checks. Twice at the house now where I live, even though I get my mail everyday, I've had envelopes opened, probably by someone looking for money or a check to cash. Plus, there's a lot of check-washing going around, where there's articles in the local paper and notices at the local bank (which even distributes special pens with ink that's hard to wash off!), and you have to go to the post office to mail checks since the big blue boxy post office mail things aren't always safe anymore, and besides all that, even, once a customer at the restaurant had check-washing happen to her, I overheard her telling her friend at a patio table...  

 And, all of this I've told my mother, and she had promised never to mail me a check, and she had also said that she would never send me more than twenty dollars, since twenty dollars doesn't matter if it gets stolen.

Second, she mailed me this check even though she knew that I was going out of town, and that it's post-holidays and a weekend is involved too. "Oh, it will get there in time," she was like. "I got confused with the day with the holidays, and I wanted you to have it by your birthday."

And, it's like she hasn't been aware of staffing cuts at the post office, or lingering holiday delays with mail, or any of that, even though her and my dad subscribe to a major newspaper, which I assume carries both articles on check-washing *and* the chronic post office woes of the past decade.

Third, she didn't realize that this would dump taking care of this on me, and I'd have to check with the postman if it would arrive (it wouldn't), and then on my neighbors to get my mail, all while I'm working right up to when I leave and I have a lot of different packing things to take care of, all of which makes it less of a sweet and thoughtful birthday gift, and more of a pain in the *ss.

It's like she was just completely out of it, on multiple, multiple levels.

Perhaps worst was one stray comment she made about check-washing, that she'd just lose the money.

Somehow it didn't compute with her, that they not only check-wash the recipient, but change the amount on the check, too!

Having seen all this now, I can see why elderly folks suddenly start becoming targeted for scams. They just can't register information like they used to, and they make repeated lapses in judgment. She's really living in a different world, where it's still cool to send a check by mail and it will get there in a few days, no problem.