A Tale of Two Calls

Yesterday afternoon I received the first of two major telephone calls in the last 24 hours. The first was from our local adoption agency. A young lady has selected us to potentially parent her child who is due in January. There are a lot of details to be worked out, and as is always the case in adoption, there are many things which could still change the situation, but we're hopeful. In the mean time, please say a prayer for this young lady and her unborn little boy. We get to meet her next week, so we'll keep everyone posted.

The second call came at around 6:45am this morning. This one not so happy. I knew it was bad news when the phone rang on two separate occasions while I was trying to shave.

"Hello?"
"I was in an accident." (In a somewhat shakey tone.)

It snowed about 1/16th of an inch here last night, but this left the roads in pretty awful condition for the morning rush hour. Now every man knows that such a call can immediately go down two paths. The first leads to a tender, caring exchange where the husband makes sure the wife is ok and assures her that everything will be fine. The second leads to a hellish week where your dinner is thrown hastily on a plate and slid across the counter to you with a terse "There's your dinner" with an implied "loser" tacked on the end. "You care more about the car than you do me. Hope you enjoy the couch jerko." Understanding this, I took the first route.

"Are you ok?"
"Yes, I'm fine."
"Is the car ok?"
"I think so."

Here is where I ran back up the path and took the second route, or so I've been told.

"Why did you take the backroads this morning? I thought we agreed that in bad weather, we'd take the main roads?"
"It wasn't my fault! There wasn't any ice...until the mail boxes."
"Mailboxes?"
"I can't believe we're discussing which route I took. I can't believe you!"
"How many mailboxes? Are you sure the car is ok?"

This was all resolved over the course of a few more phone calls. In the end, the wife sustained only husband inflicted emotional damage, the car sustained some minor bumper damage, and a couple of mailboxes suffered a mow down at moderate speed. I'm sure we'll get the call on those tonight. I'll leave you with one final comment from my dearest:

"I didn't think it would be icy because I saw the salt trucks. They salt to prevent ice, right?"