About 5 years ago I got a call from a 60 something lady who said she was an aspiring author and needed help to “computerize” her manuscript.
I figured that a mid-range MFC with a scanner and optical character recognition (OCR) software would do the trick so I explained my solution to which she agreed. The idea was to set it all up and then show her how to scan 2-3 documents, OCR them, and then onto Ms Word.
Some days later while on the job she briefly left the small home office and returned to say that her mother wanted to say hello!
I looked up and found that rather weird so I just nodded OK and didn’t give it much thought.
Within a couple of minutes an Asian lady appeared who pushed a wheelchair into the room on which a very old lady sat and strategically positioned her so she could observe everything I was doing.
She must’ve been 90 something, very frail, had no teeth and just stared at me with her mouth wide open! I tried to smile but felt very uneasy and didn’t really know what to do. It was pretty awkward.
All of a sudden I discovered that the old lady could speak when she said in a very loud and clear voice…
“Kyrie Mariai… Kyrie Mariai… eisai boli goiteutikos!”
And I’m like… WTF?
...and thought… 
“Enna mas gamisoun damesa!”I managed a very timid “Efharisto” but by now I was feeling hot under collar… I already had her daughter cracking onto me earlier when she insisted on kissing me (on the cheek) for fixing something in her Windows and now the old girl was trying her luck too!
Man, I reckon the last time a guy walked into that apartment must’ve been in the 1960s. I began to sense that there were some very lonely women in this place… only by now they had gone off pretty bad!
I remember thinking to myself… if I get out of this place without getting raped by a bunch of grannies I’ll be very lucky!
Not too long after that the daughter came in, noticed that I was rather uncomfortable and to my relief wheeled her out with a… “Afiston kyrion Marion na kami din doulian dou!”
But my relief was not to last for she pulled up a chair and sat right next to me eager to soak up every little move I was making.
Soon it seemed that every little win I had with the job; like successfully scanning a page, or copying text over to Word, or whatever… had to be “rewarded” with a peck on the cheek!
“Bravo… na se filiso!” she’d say all the time!
I knew I was in trouble so I had to think of something fast…
“Exehasa na sinafero oti oi gyneka mou einai filologos kai tha mborousen na kami proof-read to vivlio an thelis, alla den thimame di hreoni giauto…”
Problem solved!
