First of all – Happy Thanksgiving.
Since we are on the west coast, I hope you all have your turkey, tofurkey, or whatever in the oven.
We have a pie cooking. An apple pie. This is significant since the kids almost always demand a pumpkin pie. Now I like pie, but I also like apple pie. Haven’t made one in a long time. What I forgot, is that apple pies often bubble over a bit and it is a good idea to put something underneath them to catch the drippage.
That would have been a good thing to do, maybe even the right thing to do. Yesterday Carl had a chance to do something or do nothing.
Carl was out getting a child, normal stuff that takes him out of the house for a few moments. When he returned he was going to call one of the parents to see when another childs pre-Thanksgiving pre-school performance was happening. The beep-beep says a message is on the phone. So he listens, again. The person on the phone does not say his name or my name or their name. She just is breathing hard, a baby/small child is crying, she says something like, “help,” “this is horrible,” then appears to think she has hung up but you can hear the crying continue, breathing, an, “Oh shit,” and on for about 1-1/2 minutes. Then the phone is hung up. There is a second call, but no message again and very short.
Not knowing who it was or what was going on Carl called for a second listener to see if I could tell who it was. No idea – sounded a bit like one of the mothers, but I was able to get the phone number by having the voice mail try to return the call. (No one answered.) So Carl called the Dad, who he had picked up the phone to call initially. Not them.
The next call was to the North End Police Precinct. Carl told them the story and provided the phone number. They said there was not much they could do, but thank you.
Later that afternoon, Carl got a call. It was the woman. She wanted to thank him for following through. Apparently the police had called her and gotten through. The crying and initial call was due to a 2-year old falling and knocking out a front tooth. Lots of blood, pain, and crying. The woman had been trying to call the dentist, and one number had been mis-dialed, leading to us.
In the end, not a really big thing, nothing heroic, but one of those little things that is the right thing to do. And her returning the call at the end of it all with a, “Thank You,” closed the loop and made us all a little more connected.
Happy Thanksgivings and remember to say Please and Thank You.
Raincharm's Weblog 
November 26, 2009 at 8:01 pm |
I think it was heroic. It is so easy to think that someone else will do something.