Manufactured Emergencies

Back in the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Pangaea was still a continent, and Moses was starting kindergarten -- I'm talking the 1970s and 1980s to hear my kids say it -- very few of us had answering machines.  Remember that?  Remember when instructing people to leave a message 'after the beep' was actually an instruction some people needed because they'd never left a message on a machine before?  No one except the super rich had cell phones, and they were either briefcase sized or tethered to a car.  My father, who enjoys talking on the phone about as much as he loves dental surgery, thought the whole cell phone concept was insane.  He took the receiver and curly cord off of one of those phones we used to have that was actually connected to the wall, and kept it in his briefcase.  Occasionally, while on the commuter train, just to be obnoxious, he would pull it out, trap the cord between the latches of the briefcase, and pretend to have a conversation.  In the car, he would stick the cord between the seats.  Naturally, this embarrassed the bejeebers out of me and my sister, but we got over it, and now, in retrospect, I think that's kinda funny.

And I also see his point.  What is so urgent that it can't wait til I get home or to the office?  Nothing.  I'm not an emergency responder.  In fact, I'm pretty useless in an emergency.  Blood and gore ick me out, I admit to a great deal of cowardice when it comes to bad guys, I cannot aim a weapon of any kind in any kind of purposeful direction, and I have never once in my life thrown a real punch -- I'm pretty sure I can't take one either.  So, if something is truly urgent, the last person you want to summon to the scene is me.  Call 911.  If it isn't a 911 situation, it isn't an emergency.  Period.  No arguments.

I was doing business with someone with whom I do business often, and he stopped our business every time his phone made a noise (which was every fifteen seconds) to look and see what the source of the noise was and to occasionally 'text back' or whatever the heck he was doing.  I put up with it for a while, and then finally said, "Do you know what happens if you ignore the beep?"  He looked at me as if I were about to reveal the location of the Holy Grail.  "No!  What?"

I didn't answer right away, making room for a dramatic pause to build tension.  "Absolutely nothing."

"But what if it is an emergency?"  He said incredulously, as if I'd asked him to completely ignore a young child chasing a litter of puppies into traffic.

"Then whoever is calling you should be calling 911.  You are not an emergency responder.  Everything and everybody else can wait until we are done here."

"What if someone is dead?"

"Then they will still be dead an hour from now."

Perhaps I am unsympathetic or unfeeling.  But I don't think so.  I think this is a matter of common courtesy which, as we all know, is as common as undiscovered Shakespeare plays.  In the 43 years of my life so far, there has only been one time that a phone call required my immediate attention, when my husband called me to tell me that my 3 year old daughter had fallen at day care and broken her arm.  I flew to the scene of the crime.  But the truth is that if I hadn't gotten the call for an hour, her arm would be no differently broken and my husband, who was there, could have competently handled the situation without me.  I wanted to be there and I am infinitely glad that I was -- but I didn't need to be there.  If it were still the olden days when pictures were taken on actual film and you had to get off the sofa to change a channel, and I didn't find out until I got home and got the message off the answering machine, everything would have been ok in the end.

The point is this -- be there when your babies need you.  Be accessible to your friends and family.  Return messages in a timely fashion.  But if we are talking to each other, I hope I am interesting enough to distract you from a text message from Chili's offering free chips and salsa.  I do like Chili’s chips and salsa, though, so if you get one, take me with you.  I promise not to double dip.