Have you ever seen something, maybe while you were just walking around minding your own business, and a few days or months later you wondered “Geez, I wonder what happened with that?”
Blue Twylight’s pregnancy test thread reminded me of something I saw a few weeks ago while I was taking TinyTot into the restroom. There were these two teenage girls hanging out there, not doing anything and I figured that they were probably skipping school. When we came out of the stalls to wash our hands, I noticed a pregnancy test right on top of all the other trash.
Now, I have no proof that it was theirs, but I got a very vibe that it was. I wonder if I should have said something? But what? Now whenever I see the teens walking to school, I always scan for their faces, wondering if they’re okay. Poor girls, I hope it worked out for them.
Wow, tater. I thought I was the only one who felt like they were an extra in someone else’s movie. This kind of thing will happen to me and I find myself following every imaginable outcome–picking out the most benevolent and hoping things turn out well.
I’ve been in restrooms and (innocently) overheard conversations that had me going. But never had the gall to ask to be informed. My husband called me on his way home from work the other night (on his cel phone), and mid-conversation, he just disappeared. No voice, no dial tone, no nothing. I waited and then hung up. When he called back a few minutes later, he said that we’d gotten interrupted by someone else’s call. He’d actually heard a man and woman in a heated conversation–he tried to talk to them, but they couldn’t hear him. So he just hung up. But he said they were arguing about something that sounded very private. He felt guilty for even hearing the little he did, and said that they had some stuff to work out. But he didn’t give it another thought. It was their business. Now, see, I’d be worried for these people. I’d be hoping that things worked out. I’d never do anything to find out, even if there was some chance I could, but I’d worry just the same.
I hate to think I’m nosy. But concerned when information is thrust upon me? Yeah, I guess so.
Yep, me too. Last weekend in Chapters, there were two young teenaged girls in the restroom, one of whom had just had the top of her ear pierced. She was almost in tears, and the other girl was giving her advice on taking care of it (incorrect advice) and telling her how cool it looked.
I butted right in, which I do not usually do. I gave her the correct methods for cleaning her new earring, and wished her luck with it. But even now I still wonder how her mom reacted when she got home, as I had the impression that this was not done with permission. Did her mom freak out? Is she bothering to clean it right, or is it getting infected? I probably wouldn’t recognize those two again if they walked right up to me, but I still wonder…
When I first moved into my last house, I kept getting messages on my answerphone from a man I didn’t know. I still had the demo message on my answer machine, to give me some sort of privacy. The calls were always when I was at work, and he kept asking for “Sam” (not my name or anyone I know). Unfortunately, his number was blocked on callback - not that sinister, it sounded like an office in the background, and switchboard numbers are always blocked by my cable company.
The thing is, he was becoming more and more upset by his search for Sam. She had obviously let him down in some way, and he was desperate to talk to her, but for some reason had the wrong number. This went on for a couple of weeks, until it just tailed off. I’d really love to have known if she ever called him, and if his lickle heart was mended. He sounded really quite sweet. It was so frustrating not to be able to call him back and put him out of his misery.
It sounds like it’s too late now, but clearly could have changed the message, perhaps leaving out your own name but including, “If you are calling for Sam, she is no longer at this number…” or something of that sort, or at least included your first name or say “Be sure to include your phone number even if you think I have it.”
I always get calls at work and it’s striking how many people seem to think that “Ramon” must pronounce his name “David” when he creates his voicemail greeting. The other thing they do is “Hi … this … is… Amy… Please… call… me…back…at…two…one…two…fivfothreesixohsetwo.” Right, like I have any chance of deciphering that."
As for being extras in someone else’s movie, I remember being in a restaurant in Italy once with a friend I was traveling with. Normally we considered ourselves the center of attention, but this loud table nearby consisting of two British couples, the male half of each was goading the already tipsy opposing female forces into drinking a shot some sort of yellow liqueur. All of a sudden we could feel the imaginary camera had shifted and we were in the background, simply extras in a comic scene of silly British tourists, rather like “Jeannette and Dougie from Manchester” in “Shirley Valentine”. Quite odd…
Years ago when I was in law school I came home one night to find this recorded message on my answering machine (paraphrase):
“Hello, you are receiving a call from an inmate phone at the Michigan State Correctional Institution in Jackson, Michigan. If you will accept the charges…”
This struck me as bizarre, since I didn’t know anyone who was in jail in Michigan–I’ve known a few who were jailed in Pennsylvania, but that’s a different story. It had nothing to do with being in law school–I wasn’t qualified to represent anybody yet, and I wasn’t on any lists for such things. I assumed it was a wrong number, and forgot about it.
A few weeks later it happened again–same recording, same prison. Another wrong number, I figured, and once again forgot it–I was busy, and I didn’t have time for whatever this was. Then it happened a third time. Then it stopped. I forgot about it.
Later I realized that whoever it was in the state pen might have been trying to call the last owner of that number. Or maybe it was a scam of some sort–such things have been known to happen. Or maybe it really was just a wrong number. How did it turn out? I’ll never know.
Several years ago, I heard our answering machine go off at 3:30 in the morning. I stumbled out of bed to answer the phone, but couldn’t get there in time to pick up. The caller said, “Your f*cking cow is in my garden again! Get 'er outa there NOW, or I’m gonna shoot 'er.”
We owned no cows. We didn’t have caller I.D., so I couldn’t call this irate gardener back, to inform him of this fact. I coudn’t identify his voice; he had the typical Ozark “twang”, and could have been almost any guy in the county between ages 30-60.
All I could do was hope that the cow decided to leave on her own. To this day, I wonder if the cow got shot, all because of someone dailing the wrong number in the middle of the night.
About a week ago we ran into bumper to bumper traffic far later than would be explained by rush hour. We tried three different routes, all of which were bumper to bumper. It took us an hour to get to the store, not usually a very long drive. I still want to know what the heck was causing the hold up.
I once witnessed an accident… this was about … um… maybe 11 years ago on Thanksgiving Day. I was heading from Phoenix to Tucson on I-10… traffic was hanging back from an extreme drunk driver who was weaving from shoulder to shoulder in a beat up old car with Mexico plates. One by one, someone would nerve up and pass them. Eventually it was my turn, and I passed them. I kept an eye on their car in my rear view mirror, because I didn’t trust them, obviously. I passed a pickup truck on the shoulder, hood up, with a man standing in front looking at the engine. I looked in the rear view mirror as I passed, and saw the drunk weave into the lane next to a semi. The semi, reacting instinctively, swerved onto the shoulder to avoid the drunk. The semi plowed directly into the truck on the shoulder, which lept into the desert in a cloud of dust and splintering wood. Black smoke started to pour out of the semi. The drunk car sped up to about 90 and high-tailed it away… I chased them until I could jot down their license plate number, then I pulled off at the next exit to call 911.
I still wonder if the guy who owned the truck was still standing in front of it when the semi hit… and if he lived. I also wonder if the car I saw off in the desert 20 minutes later, with several cop cars around, was the mexicans, finally having wrecked themselves.
This also happens to me quite often. One I seem to remember whenever I smell an open fire is that of a woman whose age I could only guess at by looking at her husband because she did look pretty weathered in comparison. I’d think she was about 40 but looked 55-60.
They had a large one room hut on a trail up in the Nepali Himalayas and she spent most of each day hovering over an open fire fuelled with either brushwood or Yak dung. Something was wrong with her eyes (I guessed cataracts) and she was often in considerable pain. I wondered if years of smoke getting in her eyes might have contributed to her condition.
A large part of her contribution was to cook and keep the fire going (heat, light, food….) and it was getting tougher and tougher for her yet there was no prospect of having an operation in what is possibly the world’s poorest country. I wonder what happened to her and wished I had more medicine with me than a few pharmaceutical pills.
Still makes me sad to think of her and how little she needed (in our terms) to take the pain away.
