I had a phobia of midnight calls. Pictures of car accident, sickness or robbery flashed.
Most frightening of all are calls for help. Now I must make myself clear that I had no special training. I am just an ordinary person who is good at listening. One night many years ago, I had a call from a neighbour. It was a strange call alright. In the first place, the caller did not really want to talk to me. He asked about inconsequential stuff and abruptly lowered his voice asking me to call "you know who" to tell her "same time old place this Sunday".
I must have been speechless for a while as he had to run a monologue of nonsense. Then I shot him a series of questions: "you guys are eloping?", "Are you kidnapping her?", " What caused this special situation?","What are you up to next?"... After satisfying myself that there was little risk of both parties getting into further trouble, I lectured him on alternative means of communication.
Finally I did make the call the next day. This time I dug more information out of her. It seemed harmless enough. Guy loves girl. Girl responded. Both sets of parents objected. Did they break up? No, the courting merely went under ground. In this case, it was not puppy love. Ten years later they brought their baby boy to visit me. So it looked like I made the right decision that night, after all.
* FoodPoisoningMicrobes.jpg from braintree.gov.uk
