by Jennifer Kinnaman
Here’s a great kick-off for the New Year: a wonderful true story from one of last semester’s magazine-writing classmates. Some people think kids say the darnedest things!
Every once in awhile a confluence of incidents leads to a bizarre and somewhat hilarious event. Such was the case on a sunny April morning.
The evening before, my husband had called our insurance company to tell them we did not want to renew our life insurance policies that were expiring in two days, due to the downturn in the economy and cost. The next morning, my five-year-old daughter wakes me up with phone in hand to ask if she could call Daddy at work. After grumpily telling her that she is not allowed to wake people up who are sleeping, especially her mother who is fighting a bleeding rash on her neck, I tell her that all she had to do is hit the redial button on the phone if she wanted to call Daddy at work. Since he was the last person I called on that phone, it should ring right into his office.
Ten minutes later, as I’m drifting back to sleep, my eight-year-old son runs into my room and tells me that someone is banging on the front door, looking in the windows and coming into our fenced back yard. I leap from the bed to look through the window and discover that several Sheriff’s officers are trying to get into our house. I bang on the window and say, “Can I help you?” They tell me to come to the front door.
After quickly getting dressed, I open the front door to find police officers all over our front yard, three standing on our front porch. I ask if everything is OK. One says, “That’s what we’re here to find out, ma’am.”
They said they got a 911 call from our insurance agent this morning who said that they had a five-year-old girl on the line who was telling them that she can’t wake mommy or her brother up and that mommy has blood on her neck and that she needs to call daddy and wondered if they have his number at work.
Based on the things my daughter was saying, the insurance agent believed Daddy had possibly killed Mommy for the insurance money before the policy expired the next day and had called the police. Mortified, I apologized profusely.
And that’s why my daughter is not allowed to use the phone for the next five years!
Too funny! Amazing how kids can leave out things like context when they’re relaying information. =).
I typically avoid using redial simply for that exact reason that I always forget about a call I made and end up talking to someone I had no idea I was calling.
It is a hilarious story, especially since it isn’t mine. Isn’t it amazing the amount of detail that kids can put in talking to someone they don’t know.
Good for the insurance man!
As mortifying as this must have been for the lady [and I could have seen this happening in my children’s youth] how wonderful to have an insurance man who chose not to ignore a 5 year old child and send help!!
Heh!
Great story. Almost reads like it’s been lifted from a screenplay.