In my lifetime, I think I’ve had to call 911 one time when I watched someone basically butterfly open their forearm after putting it through a pane of glass. Outside of that little incident, emergencies have been few and far between…until this past weekend.
Late Saturday morning, and I mean 11am not 2am, I was driving down the road. If you’re in PA, kinda like driving down 51. If you’re on LI, like Sunrise Highway. If you’re in FL, like US1. So I’m driving down said road with Hubby in the passenger side. I am in the passing lane and I see a person in the right line driving pretty erratically. Like swerving, tailgating, and just generally being dangerous on the road. Said person is actually going beyond tailgating. Too close to the cars in front to even be called tailgating. Hubs sees this also and decides to get a little video in the event that we are witness to a crash caused by this lunatic.
Well, you’d better believe that the lunatic driver was NOT happy about this action. Pretty much set the driver right off. Now, I am the focus of this driver’s insanity. Said driver started riding, likely within inches of my bumper. When that wasn’t enough, the driver pulled up beside us and started screaming at us. With the window rolled up, I asked Hubs to NOT roll down the window. Not for any reason. Because right now, I’m a little bit scared for our lives. Now Hubs is on the phone to call the police. Local police say call 911, so we do. We let them know what’s going on as I’m driving. This lunatic is still right by us and I’m doing my best to simply ignore him, stay on the road, and keep a normal speed.
911 says that they will alert officers in the area as we’ve given them a description of the car, including its plate, and the driver. Lunatic finally decides to get off my ass and away from us and we see the crazed driver speed by us and pull into a parking lot. It’s possible he just got tired of harassing us, but it’s more likely that he kinda figured out that we were on the phone with the police and if they find him, he’s in for it.
That threw me completely off my Saturday game. I was planning to wash my car, but then I was a little bit scared that the loon was still in the area and would recognize me and start shit. Since I wasn’t prepared to take my gun in my car, I just stayed at home for the rest of the day.
So, here we are on Sunday. The Pirates game has just come on, but I also need to get some stuff done for my Instagram challenges. I mosey on down to the #yogdungeon and work my way through my very first Ashtanga class. It was a beginner one, so it didn’t go through everything a regular class would, but it gave me a taste and I found that I like it.
Sidebar: We live in basically a retirement community. We have three neighbors – Paul, Bunny, and Kitty. Paul is next to us sharing a wall. Bunny and Kitty are both behind us where our decks all look at each other. We’re not entirely sure who lives alone and who has a second person there but we THINK that Paul is alone but Bunny and Kitty have husbands.
A couple weeks ago, Bunny’s son was over for a while. He left and later that day we saw red flashing lights. We peek outside to see the police and fire department walking around Bunny’s house, looking in windows and they have a ladder. Seems that someone sent them on a welfare check. Poor Bunny was just taking a shower.
All of a sudden, Hubs comes bounding down the stairs and tells me that he thinks that Kitty fell. We both go racing back up and I go out to the deck to see if she’s ok. She’s sitting on the ground with a plant between her legs and so I ask her how she’s doing. But she doesn’t reply. She doesn’t even look up at me. And as I look closer, I see that she has drool coming from her mouth and mucus from her nose. SHIT!!! Race through the house, around the house and over to her. She’s definitely not verbally responsive but she’s breathing. It’s over 100 degrees out and I don’t know how long she’s been there. Run to bang on her door to get her husband. He calls 911. I go back out to Kitty. She’s still not responding. Mr. Kitty (his name is Bob) makes his way out (he has a walker). He’s on with 911 and they’re asking questions. I ask him to give me the phone. Kitty is still breathing but she’s still not verbally responsive. 911 wants me to lay her down on her back. That’s just not a possibility. She’s practically sitting in a puddle from the hose that was on. I don’t want to make it worse by slipping when trying to move her. Luckily, at that moment, the police show up. Hang up with 911. The police are trying to talk to Kitty, get her to squeeze a hand if she can hear them. (WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!?!) She’s squeezing but weakly. I go into their house to get some cool paper towels for Kitty’s forehead and to clean her up a little. Dignity, people. The paramedics have arrived and they are able to lift Kitty up onto the gurney. Hubs and I speak with the police for a while, giving them a timeline and our information. We’re told that we probably saved a life. We don’t want congrats. We’re just being decent human beings. I mean, really, who sees an elderly person in distress and just ignores them?!?!
Bob and Kitty’s daughter lives about a half hour away. So I tell Bob to just call them and I’d drive him to the hospital. On the way, we have some nice conversation. Bob is surprisingly calm about this whole ordeal. I don’t know that I’d be that calm if Hubs suddenly had something like this happen and I KNOW he wouldn’t be calm. It turns out that Kitty’s name is really Carol. (We’ve been calling her Kitty because she has 2 cats and she just yells out for them, “Kitty!”) Bob is a retired doctor. He’s been in the Army and lived all over. He keeps up with baseball and even knew about Marte going to the ASG. We talked about how different things are these days. He was super appreciative of our help. I offered to stay with him at the hospital until his family got there, but he promised he would be ok.
We saw his family bring him back late last night and they were there again this morning as I left for work. I haven’t gotten an update on Carol, but I am hoping against hope that she’s ok. And that I don’t have to call 911 any more for like another 40 years.