Thursday, August 2, 2012

I Am A Good Neighbor

You know who makes the best next door neighbors? Stay At Home Moms?

Yesterday as I was sitting at the computer this nice, older, grandmotherly woman with a dog came to my door. She was panicked. She had gone outside to let the dog out and locked herself out of the house..... with a 6 week old baby sitting in the swing and her phone on the counter.

Oh, no.

I try to reassure her, that babies that young sleep all the time and everything will be fine. Is there a spare key anywhere? NO. Is there an open window? NO. Does the garage door lift with a handle? NO.

She is afraid that the mother is going to kill her. Why? Because this is the first time that she has watched the baby alone. She doesn't know the mothers phone number. She doesn't know where she works. We try to find her number in the phone book. Who is listed in the phone book anymore! We try to find her online, no luck.

She uses my phone to call her husband who is at home, but  isn't interested in answering the phone with an unknown area code from out of state (that would be me).

She calls another number, no one answer. Those must be the only two numbers that she knows. We call, and call, and call.

I suggest that maybe we call the fire department or a lock smith. Surely they could help. She is terrified that she will be reported as an unfit mother.

She asks for a towel so that she can break the glass. I can imagine that is going to go over well. Its the middle of summer and HOT outside.

Finally, we get a hold of the husband and he drives over. They are the baby's grandparents and don't know their own daughters phone number. Heavens, I only know a handful of numbers myself. Our super smart phones make it impossible to learn a string of numbers and store them in our heads.  I offer her a glass of water and a place to sit, but she insists on waiting by the door or window so she can hear/see the baby.

I felt so bad for her. But glad that at least someone in this neighborhood was home! So, if you need to leave a key with someone - pick at stay at home mom:-)

I did feel bad, because we have lived here for a month and still haven't introduced ourselves to our neighbors. Perhaps if we had we could have proved more helpful. A towel, a phone, and a glass of water was all we were able to provide.

Phew, good thing we don't have doors that automatically lock behind us. Surely, this would have already happened to me!

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6 comments:

  1. This sounds really scary for anyone! My church friends that are SAHMs are the best friends all around. It is really nice to have someone reliable who you know is going to be there.

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  2. Also, The Lawyer is very concerned about us ever leaving our future kids with our parents. I think my mother would be more apt to do something like this than his mom, though...lol.

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    1. I hear you! The few times we have needed to leave the kids overnight with a parent we have always stressed about it. Our last trip we separated the kids. My parents took the older ones, his took the baby. I was concerned about my mom being able to watch all of them and take care of a baby - she had 5 kids of her own, but that was decades ago.

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  3. I am glad you were able to help out in this emergent situation. However, in the long run, I'd hate to see you get taken advantage of as a stay-at-home mom. Just because you are home doesn't mean you are not busy and have plans/priorities. I am saying this to you because my mom was a SAHM and she got taken advantage of a lot. In the time before smart phones/GPS people would call her when they were lost driving around. They would call her to get someone else's number because they knew she was always home and would always answer. And don't get me started on trips to the airport. We lived in a podunk town and the closest airport was 1.5 hours away. My mom made many airport runs, and for those that were especially shameless, and wanted a cheap flight, she would have to go 3 hours to the nearest Southwest Airlines hub. Ugh.

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    1. Wow, your mom was really nice... and sounds like she was taken advantage of. Maybe I should wish to be just useful enough but not too useful:-)

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  4. So nice of you. I wouldn't blame the Granny though, she sounds very sweet. Looking on the bright side, that little incident could help Granny keep up with the times, and, you made a new friend.

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