I was at home last Friday afternoon, having a marvellous time lounging in my slippers and housecoat while eating bon bons and watching Bold and the Beautiful.
The phone rang. It was a good Samaritan (are there any bad ones?), who I’ll call A, telling me he saw a woman I work with, B, parked on the side of a road about five minutes from me and looking distressed.
I called her mobile phone and it was switched off. I tried a few minutes later and it was still off. I fretted that she might not have been able to call roadside assistance if her phone battery had gone flat, so I got in my car and went looking for her.
I turned a bend in the road and saw a car with its bonnet up, my workmate kicking and yelling in her native language and about half a dozen bags strewn across the clearing where she had parked. And several mobile phones were sitting on the roof of her car. The scene was a tad confusing.
She gave me a hug and pondered my magical telepathic powers. I confessed that someone we used to work with drove past but couldn’t stop and gave me a phone call because, you know, my phone is switched on sometimes. I asked if her phone was broken and she said no, the phone number I had was on an expensive plan and she keeps it turned off. She uses another phone to make calls. M’okay. That explains some of the phones, kind of.
Have you called the RACV?
No, I’ve called C.
Does C work for the RACV?
No, she’s my friend.
Is she a mechanic?
No.
M’okay, have you called your husband?
No, he lost his mobile phone.
Can you call him at work?
No, I don’t know the phone number.
Okay, you need to call the RACV.
I can’t, I don’t know where I am.
Call and give the operator your membership details, and hand the phone to me.
She called, but was asked to describe the problem before she was asked her location.
“I was driving and there was smoke everywhere, the car was on FIRE! The car was on FIRE!”
Hmm, I thought, I hadn’t smelled the evidence of fire. I took the phone and described to the operator that the radiator hose was detached and there was no danger of fire at this time. Oh, and here’s where we are. Up to 90 minutes? Can’t do much about that, m’okay, thanks, we’ll be here, bye.
To pass the time I asked B why her bags were scattered about the landscape. She had become so angry at her car that she threw everything that was in the car out of the car. After that, two nice men, D and E, stopped by to lift the car’s bonnet and check the ‘fire’.
Hang on, you’ve had time to toss your luggage, have a hissy fit at your car and talk to some locals who knew the name of the road so you could have called roadside assistance?
Yes.
M’okay. It was going to be a long wait.
An hour later C rocked up for moral support and D and E dropped by again on their way home to check into her welfare. None of them had thought to bring cheese and biscuits. The RACV mechanic took more than 90 minutes but fixed the problem in less than 10 minutes. I’d have clapped his grand efforts but my hands had frozen by that stage. It was very dark.
Mr RACV disappeared into the night, D and E had livestock to find and feed in the darkness, I needed to go home and turn the heater on and B and C opted to go and have a drink. I asked B if she was going to call her husband as he’d have arrived home by then and be wondering where she was. No, she said. M’okay.
Crank-o-meter: m’okay
June 9th, 2009 | Tags: human behaviour | Category: human behaviour | Comments (14)
