My Blah-Blah-Blog

Got this in an email from my pastor today. It was very thought provoking and helped me stop and still my thoughts for a moment. I hope it does the same for you:

Dear Church Family:

I read a devotional book each day written by Leo Tolstoy about 100 years ago.  It’s a collection of ancient wisdom.  He worked on it for years, drawing wisdom from all the major traditions, and particularly from his own as a Christian man.  I was particularly taken by the reading on December 12, so I thought I’d send along a few of the points from that day’s reading.

God bless you

Doug

—

DECEMBER 12

On Anger and Hatred

In your quiet, inner thoughts, always try to find the good in others.

Make it a habit not say anything bad about others, even in your own thoughts.

When you interact with a person, try to find as much common ground as possible, the more the better, and try to nurture this feeling in yourself.

To cease being angry with a person and instead to seek peace, forgiveness, and love toward him, remind yourself of any sins you may have in common and compare them.

Hopefully the twitterverse will calm down a little with all the brouhaha and words regarding the death (yes, it’s been confirmed by Brevard County Sheriff) of @military_mom ‘s son.

Twitter opens new doors for people to get help, but because of it’s telephone-chain-style of information spreading, people further down the road aren’t getting information firsthand. We’re getting RT of an RT of an RT and so on.

With the balloon boy story fresh in our minds, and the reality that some people will indeed take advantage of the internet, it’s not surprising that so many were immediately skeptical of this story.

So, people, skeptics and supporters alike:  it’s okay to want to check out a story or a request for prayers or money. It’s not okay to attack someone or call them a liar straight out, but it’s A OK to say, “Hey, I want to help but I don’t know you. Can you give me something to work with?”

It’s good to see the community – real and virtual – come together to help this mom out. I hope that this family recovers from their loss quickly.

Another update:

Well, sad news. It’s been confirmed by the Brevard County Sheriff’s office that this little guy did indeed pass away. So if you want to help/can help this family, check out twitter feeds for more info, or go to: http://ilikeitfrantic.net/2009/12/prayers-and-hugs-for-the-ross-family/

UPDATE

Yeah, don’t be hating. Nothing wrong with wanting to help someone but checking it out first…

There’s NO local police reports, no local news story. I work for the media industry and there’s no way a story like this would go unreported. Seriously: mom alone, hubby overseas, baby dies?

I’m concerned. Super concerned. Not just because people are giving money to what*could* be a hoax (hey, I could be wrong) but because if this never happened, then a mother is speaking as though her son is dead. That’s terribly troubling. From a psychological standpoint, what does that say???

Original post:

Yes, I’m jumping on the bandwagon.

A few minutes ago I read a tweet by a kind person wishing well to someone who’d apparently lost a loved one. I clicked on the @name and discovered a few tweets by a lady whose son apparently drowned in Florida about 16 hours ago. Very sad, tragic, shocking indeed. But wait…something isn’t sitting right.

Who tweets “Please pray, 2 year old fell in a pool” followed up by odd posts with pictures. She never really says the child died, but it’s assumed based on the comments (read here: http://twitter.com/military_mom). Plus it’s foggy out – likely chilly. I lived in Fort Myers: WE NEVER went swimming in December. But okay, maybe she lives farther south. Maybe it’s a heated pool. But what’s with the chickens?

Now mind you, if I was at the hospital and was trying to get some prayers, yeah I may twitter. There’s something about the camaraderie of your friends online – whether you’ve met face to face or not. I tweeted when a beloved friend died a few months ago. But my baby?

Fog rolls in. Hour later baby fell in pool. At what point between trying to get him out, calling 911, police, fire, medical rolling on scene, attempting CPR… at what point did she tweet this prayer request?

Something just doesn’t seem right. There are no news reports at all. The AP Florida Bureau has nothing. Google search has nothing with the mom’s name or the child’s name.

Here’s what I think. Sympathies to this mom if this happened. I hope she catches a break from the nasty comments putting blame on her. If tweeting brings you comfort and some therapeutic value, keep doing it.

However, as someone who has worked in Law Enforcement, I suggest someone pay this home a visit and check on mom and baby. It isn’t impossible that maybe she’s just overwhelmed and needs help (her hubby is deployed right now). This could be a little shout-out for someone to help her out. It may be a big fat red flag that something isn’t right.

Looks like this gal is heading up the research department: http://twitter.com/madisonmcgraw. She’s catching flack too, but she has a point: just verify the story. (Check out her blog here: http://girlarsonist.blogspot.com/ )

If it’s true, I’m sure LOADS of people will flock to assist this family right away.

Either way, this woman needs help pronto: either her son just died OR something else is going on and she feels the need to lie and say he did.

Comments welcome but BE NICE.

Now let’s review. I’ve been sitting in my [broken] car for more than a half hour, pressing on the break pedal like mad so my car didn’t roll over a small curb into a pretty sizable ditch. I’d been crying and was pretty stressed out. My hair was a mess, my makeup was streaked and I’m sure I had a mild look of panic on my face. But then Officer Hunka-Hunka showed up. Rawr!

I casually rolled down my window as this very cute (and possibly non-married) officer approached my car.

Me: (trying to be very casual) “Oh, hello! Something’s wrong with my car. It’s stuck in reverse and I’m a little worried I’m going to roll over that hill over there.”

The officer stepped back and surveyed the situation.

“If I’d known this, I’d have come sooner” he said. I’m pretty sure he meant that if he had known that my gorgeous, beautiful self was in distress he would have come sooner to assist me.

“I was dispatched to a motorist assist” he said, as if reading my mind and saying that there was no way in heyl that he’d have hurried over because of my good looks.

I was slightly annoyed by the dispatchers choice of, well, dispatching. When I was a dispatcher, a “motorist assist” meant helping a driver who was lost, or locked his keys in the car, or maybe had a flat tire. But for a poor distraught girl whose car was going to plunge to her death off roll off of a cliff!? Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a cliff…

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Ease up off the brake and roll your car to the curb.”

“Alright,” I said, “but it’s going to go pretty fast.” He just nodded his head and started using air-traffic-control-hands at me (keep moving, keep moving). I figured he was not only handsome but brave as well to have me start rolling the car towards him. He must have an ulterior motive: get my car out of control so he can grab me out at the last second, sending us both tumbling into the grass where he begins to feverishly kiss me and then…

Oh, wait… sorry. Back to my story.

I ease off the brake.

My car goes FLYING.

I slam on the brake. It barely works.

“I don’t think that is going to work. I barely lifted my foot off the pedal.”

The officer looked over the cliff of death and came over to my car.

“Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Ease up on your brake and roll toward the curb. I’ll stop you from going over.”

“You’re going to stop me? Okaaay.”

Eeeassssy, eaaaasssy. LURCH!

My car flies forward toward the very-cute-and-nice-officer.  He dives into the hood of my car with arms extended trying to stop it from rolling.

I’m trying to be calm. He’s shouting “Easy! Easy!” My brakes are NOT cooperating.

I wonder how many years a girl gets for running over a cop.

I lean my head out the window and say “I’m going easy but I think I’m going to run you over!”

This went on for about a minute.

And that is when he jumped out of the way and my car went “cccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaakkk-ccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrunnnnnch” on the curb. Like the Titanic sinking, my car moaned and groaned for about 5 seconds and then, all was quiet.

“You can get out now,” Super Cop said.

I wish I had stayed in my car, cause when I got my fat butt out, my car rolled a little more.

“I’m really sorry I had to call you out here for this,” I said.

“You did the right thing,” he said. “If you’d never called, I never would have been able to meet such a beautiful woman. Want to go to dinner?”

Yeah, kidding. He just looked at me funny.

“You did the right thing,” he said. “You got a tow coming?”

“Yeah I have a tow coming. And my brother. Thanks for your help.” Oh please oh please oh please give me your phone number…

“Have a nice day.” And then he left.

I looked at the bottom of the front end of my car. It was all mushed from the curb.

And I looked down the cliff of death. I could have probably rolled right on over it and not hurt myself at all. Just probably my car. 45 minutes of agony for nothing.

Maybe if I’d called 911 and said “My car is going over a cliff!” the response time would have been faster… AND maybe at the end I could have sat in the back of an ambulance with trembling hands, drinking hot cocoa with the    Officer’s jacket around my shoulders and him tucking my hair behind my ear…

Why is it when you look your worst, the cute guys come out of the woodwork? I bet if I hadn’t had a little nervous break down and was quite calm AND was having a good hair, makeup, face day, then they would have sent Barney Fife.

He would have asked me out.

Dear Officer:

Hello. I’m the girl who almost ran you over a few weeks ago while you tried to save my car from rolling over a curb and down an embankment. Just wanted to say sorry…

It was a nice, sunny, very warm day. I had just finished up an appointment and was in my car ready to drive home. I started it up, put it in reverse, and carefully backed out of my parking space. When I shifted the car back into drive, there was a funny grinding noise. I let up on the brake and put a little pressure on the gas.

To my surprise the car went backwards, not forwards as I had expected. I pushed down on the brake again, changed the gear shift position back to reverse and then to drive again. This was when I noticed that the shift stick was moving with too much ease and the needle on my dashboard was NOT moving.

Oh noes! My car was stuck in reverse and my gear shift was broken!

I took a deep breath and decided I’d just back into another spot and turn off the ignition then call someone for help. I slowly backed my car around the corner of the building as far as I could go to a less crowded area of the parking lot. I backed right up into another parking spot with the rear of my car facing the building I’d just left, with the front of my car facing another row of empty parking spots in front of me. Beyond the curb to those spots was a fairly large cliff ditch and wooded area.

Did I mention that this part of the parking lot sloped quite a bit? Right towards that fairly large cliff of death ditch?

No problem. I would follow through with my plan: turn the car ignition off and call someone to come help me out.

I wasn’t sure if I should turn the car off (can you do that while in reverse without something blowing up?) while stuck in reverse. I decided to call my dad and tell him what was happening. He told me to put on my emergency brake first, and then turn off the car.

I did and to my horror, the foot brake pushed up and my car pitched FORWARD. I threw off the emergency brake (let’s go ahead and rename it the “useless brake” for now) and panicked. I used both feet to push the foot brake down as hard as I could. “Uh, dad that didn’t work!”

We decided to try to turn off the car and THEN put on the emergency brake. I turned off the ignition (but couldn’t get the keys out since my car was still stuck in reverse). Then, I pulled up the emergency brake. Same thing happened: the car started to roll forward.

By now I was now halfway out of my parking spot and heading towards that nice little wooded area. With the cl, er, ditch.

Oh, and my phone battery was beeping at me. I gave my dad the address where I was (in case the car rolled over the cliff of death ditch and they needed to recover my body) and hung up. I only had about a minute or two before the phone battery died.  Who do you call when you really need some help?

Why, call 911 of course!

“Raleigh 911 what is your emergency?”

“Hello. I am at blah blah address and my car is stuck in reverse in the parking lot and I can’t stop it. And I’m by a ditch.”

D’oh! That’s not what I wanted to say but it worked.

“Ma’am, have you put the car into drive?“

“That won’t work. Nothing is working.”  “Ma’am, have you asked someone to jump your battery?”

I explained my situation again, in a more urgent tone. “No! I mean that my car is stuck in reverse, it won’t switch gears. It won’t start. And I keep rolling toward a ditch and I’m afraid the car will go over the curb and wreck.” (Sweet Jesus I’m going to die!!!)

I asked her if she could please send help since I was trying not to hit any other vehicles. Now that I was a bona fide hazard, she said she’d send help.

I sat in my car waiting. And waiting.

And then I started to cry. I was pretty frustrated and felt really dumb just sitting in a turned off vehicle, legs straight out pressing on the brake as hard as possible, in the heat, cell phone dead. You know the kind of crying that makes your face look like you were swatted with poison ivy: all red and blotchy? Yeah, that was me.

“Take a deep breath and calm down” I told myself. After all, it’s probably nothing big and it could be worse. I could have the kids with me. This could have happened in traffic. Or both.

I wondered if I should just let the car roll forward slowly and then “hit” the curb. Then I could escape this death trap.

However, the curb was MAYBE 3 inches high, and beyond the curb was a drop. This went through my mind: car roll downhill.  Car go over curb. Car crash in ditch.

*whimper*

And that is when he showed up. Hello Officer Hunka-Hunka from Raleigh PD!!!

To be continued!!!