The summer I became a phone psychic, you could still wear shoes through airport security, Britney Spears had not yet shaved her head and no one knew I was flunking out of college.

It was 2001. I was between my sophomore and junior years at Sarah Lawrence, and was living in a two-bedroom sublet on the Upper West Side with a vegan named Heidi, her friend Laura and my angelically dopey boyfriend, Frank. My share of the rent was $600, which seemed cheap when we signed the lease and then less cheap once my meager paychecks from the Gap started rolling in. Frank had gotten a job waiting tables, which meant big bucks for him. The rest of us were broke.

When Heidi found the ad for “phone actors” in the back of The Village Voice, it seemed like the solution to everything. You didn’t have to fold clothes, and you could work from home. Maybe it could be a career!

Getting hired was easy. We called a creep in Florida and got the job on the spot, no questions asked. Well, actually, he asked Laura if she was a stripper (she was studying dance at Hampshire College), but he didn’t care when she said she wasn’t.