I often save people.
Don’t ask me how I end up in the strangest most dangerous situations ever, but I do. If there’s a car accident where there’s two kids trapped in the backseat or there’s a mugging happening or some guy is threatening a group of tourists with a stun gun, you can bet I’ll usually be just about ten feet away from the happenings. And when you’re ten feet away from such happenings, well, you’ve got to do what you see people do in the movies (cause it’s pretty much real life anyway), so I save people.
I’m not a traditional saver. I don’t hit anyone with strategically placed fingers — you know, landing a finger punch in the neck area and causing the criminals to gasp for air, drop their weapon and allow me the opportunity to cuff them to a street light using plastic strips of garbage bag ties. I don’t mince words, either.
I definitely don’t corral the people in danger out of the way and put myself in the direct line of trouble. That would just be plain silly and, really, let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment — saving people does not require putting yourself in danger. There are far better (and wimpier ways) of saving people without ever drawing attention to yourself, your name, your home address and what you do in your spare time.
I save people with my cell phone.
Why, just the other day I was driving around my neighborhood and I saw a dog standing out on the street. Being a guy who has a dog and knowing that if my dog was loose I’d want someone to grab my dog and call me about it, I pulled the car over and grabbed the dog and picked up my cell phone and called the guy who owned him. You can imagine, there was a heartwarming moment about 35 minutes later when the owner and dog were reunited — and I had saved yet another person in the process. (Yes, a dog isn’t a person, but the person who owns the dog is a person and therefore I have indirectly saved a person.)
The tourists being threatened by a transient who had gotten his hands on a stun gun (which I mentioned earlier, after the title that had nothing to do with this post and before this paragraph right here that you’re reading) actually did happen. But I didn’t provide my chest for electrical-pain. No, no no. But I picked up my cell phone and called 9-1-1 and said that there was some transient who had gotten his hands on a stun gun and was threatening tourists with it.
By the time the police showed up there was no transient and tourists and stun guns, but you can imagine how proud I was in the fact that the event was happening (the threat), I made the call (the save) and the end result was that there was no longer any tourists being threatened by a transient with a stun gun. Yes, yes, yes. My indirect cell phone activity DID have a bearing on the situation at hand, and I was proud.
I have, sadly, never been in a situation where I have saved a child from drowning or falling into some kind of waterfall or Niagra Falls type location. I have, depressingly, never grabbed a child running for his ball in the middle of the road from a speeding drunk driver. I have, believe it or not, never retrieved a baby carriage (replete with baby) from falling down stairs, through oncoming traffic, and into a vat of radioactive goo. No, these things have not occured.
But I do my part in saving people wherever it must happen. I use my cell phone whenever the moment arises. And when I don’t, it’s really cool cause I have this great Battleship game on my cell phone and so I’ll play that instead. Whatever the situation, I change to accomodate the events at hand.
I’m a chameleon. Just like a chameleon.
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