<p>I have been thinking that my kids seldom call on their own. Now, I’m thankful they don’t.
Thank you all! :)</p>
<p>Call to my parents (I was 16, as was my friend, and we were driving back from my sister’s. It had just gotten dark and my friend and I started to panic because we were lost in Detroit)</p>
<p>Me: “Dad, I think we’re lost.”
D: “Why do you think that?”
Me: “Well we saw a sign that said freeway ending and welcome to Detroit… 20 minutes ago. And now we’re lost and we can no longer see street signs because it’s so dark. And we’re starting to get low on gas.”
D: “WHAT?! WHERE ARE YOU?! Just keep driving and don’t stop for anything. I don’t care if there is a red light or if there’s a chipmunk in the road, DO NOT STOP! Tell me as soon as you can find a street name that you recognize.”</p>
<p>Turns out we were in the worst possible part of Detroit. My dad bought me a GPS shortly after that… lol. </p>
<hr>
<p>From my sister (who was 16 at the time and supposed to be in school… she lived with her mom, not us. We both live in Michigan though.)</p>
<p>S: “Hey dad, can you just put $500 in my account no questions asked?”
D: “No. What did you do?”
S: “Well you see, I flew to Vegas last night with my friends…”
Long story short, she got caught underage drinking… in Vegas… in the middle of the week… while she was supposed to be at school in Michigan. :rolleyes: </p>
<p>Another one from my sister to my mom (her stepmother) when she was 14.
S: “Hey XXX, how do you know for sure if you’re pregnant? My test came out positive, but I swear I haven’t had sex.”
She was pregnant. And it had a very human father.</p>
<p>Oy vey. I just pray I don’t have a kid like my sister. My dad dreaded picking up the phone whenever she would call.</p>
<p>D: mom (sobbing) it’s getting dark and i am lost jogging and i lost my key in my sock (near really bad neighborhood) and i can’t talk long because my battery is about to go dead. what should i do? (she just got there for the summer research and knew no one to call and was renting an appt)
Me: how long have you been jogging?
D: one hour (she has run marathons)
Me:ok (thinking i have one shot at this before the battery goes) go backwards as best you can to the way you think you ran and keep looking at the ground
D: (called about an hour later) did just that- remembered she stopped to tie her shoe and found her key in the dark on the sidewalk and walked backward to her appt.</p>
<p>S2: Dad, can you come pull us out of the ditch?
Dad: Is it your car?
S2: No, it’s friends car. We don’t want to tell his dad. You won’t tell will you?</p>
<p>This has been since 6/09 with several kids-</p>
<p>-S1 Been arrested for DUI, pot and several Misdemeanors.
-Need to be bailed out for $1000 cash from jail.
-B/f broke up with D so she needs a place to live in NYC w/in 24 hrs
-Received heart wrenching crying phone calls from D all summer, including at 5:30am and 1:00 at night She was SO hurt.
-Moved D a total of 8 times (in/out) this summer in Manhattan. We live hours away.
-Two weeks (and many thousands of dollars) after the DUI trial, S totals his car. Absolutely no alcohol or drugs (he was tested). Thank G he was not hurt.
-D goes abroad for a semester and has no place to live. H and I have tried all summer to find a place for her, to no avail. She goes regardless and eventually finds a place. We where particularly concerned given her mental health in the summer and arriving in a foreign country with no place to live for 4 month.
-S1 is going to work in Dec. and has a car accident. We are called. Luckally it is not a total to he car. It does have to be towed.
D1 comes back and all seems okay finely. D1 totals the car in the beginning of Jan. She is lucky to be alive. The car is totaled.</p>
<p>So in the last 4 months we have had 3 major accidents and two totaled cars. We’ve had several court cases and several serious mental health issues. ( I haven’t included all that has happened)</p>
<p>We’ve had many bad phone calls.</p>
<p>On the morning D was supposed to be taking the train home from college for Christmas break:</p>
<p>D: I think I’m going to miss my train this morning.
Me: Why? You still have two hours before it departs.
D: There’s a fire in my dorm and it’s on my floor [6th].
Me: OMG!
D: The hallway outside my room is full of smoke. I’ve got to get out now.</p>
<p>Same D, but it involved my DH calling her. One morning last spring, D called from her cellphone to tell us she was en route to her varsity game. She said it was being played at 3 PM in the western, non-coastal part of the large state where her college is located. At about 6 PM, DH decided to call D on her cellphone to ask how her game had gone:</p>
<p>Strange woman on D’s cellphone: Hello?
DH: Who is this?
Strange woman: Who is this?
DH: This is Jane’s father and you’re on her cellphone. Who are you?
Strange woman: This is the [eastern, coastal part of the state] police department.
DH: Where is my daughter?
Strange woman: We don’t know. Someone found her cellphone on the beach this afternoon.</p>
<p>So sorry, morrismm. And… your car insurance rates must be astronomical at the moment.</p>
<p>this is a great thread- some are just downright hilarious!</p>
<p>Phonecall:</p>
<p>“Hello is this Mr. Limabeans? This is Officer Crandall. I want to tell you everything is okay.
…
I’m in your house now with your twelve year old son sir.
…
We picked him up on I-95 sir. He said he was taking a short cut from his friend’s house sir.
…
I can’t leave him alone sir. He’s underage. Do you know where your wife is sir?”
(I was at the plastic/oral surgeon’s office with my youngest son who needed emergency surgery.)</p>
<p>That was a busy day! And my DH often reminds me of that phone call.</p>
<p>Some good ones!.. but^ a 12 year old is underage to be left alone, or just under that circumstance?</p>
<p>Maybe I should be thankful S1 doesn’t call me too often…</p>
<p>First several dozen calls from DS at college all started with “Mom, I hate…”. Along with the usual freshman issues there were serious suitemate problems; eventually moved to another dorm. </p>
<p>But even worse were the ones that would start, “Mom, I hate…<sob> …never mind.” Me - “what?” Him - “I’ll be OK, don’t worry, can’t talk now.” It was on these boards that I first heard the phrase “give the drama to mama”. Apparently it helped his stress to pass it along to me.</sob></p>
<p>Very Happy- it was pillow nose grunge, I’ve seen it on his pillowcases myself (and no, dear son, I did not clean the desk chair we let you take for your apt like I cleaned the old sofa- any of the aformentioned on the sides of the cloth seat is still there).</p>
<p>I, too, am lucky any incidents are so benign.</p>
<p>From S: “Mom, I got stopped by the cops, but don’t worry, I talked him out of it…”
What’s It???
“Mrs. Gos, this is Officer XXX, your underage S & friends have been caught in possession
of alcohol on the cliffs…”
S: “Mom, I’ve been in an accident. The car isn’t too bad” (It was totaled.)
“Mrs. Gos, this is the Dean. Your (freshman HS) son is being suspended for a Facebook
page which also has a pornographic picture on it.” (Catholic school priest,
determined Jessica Simpson in low cut dress was porn…)
From D: “Mom, don’t worry, everything’s o.k., I called the Dentist and he said there’s
nothing he can do tonight about S’s knocked out front tooth from skate-
boarding down the hill”</p>
<p>GosDad has been recipient of many calls from me speeding in the car, along the lines of “How the He## can you ALWAYS be out of town when S needs to go to the ER?!?”
(He’s 0 for 9…)</p>
<p>Wis75, know what you mean! Keep asking S if he needs his allergy drugs and he says no. The pillowcase says otherwise.</p>
<p>This was 4 yrs ago so the emotions have subsided.</p>
<p>Rec’d a call close to the end of first semester freshman year (not from S): “Ms. Scansmom, this is the XX University police. We’re trying to locate your son…”</p>
<p>Long story short: Drinking-related incident which somehow also involved a fire alarm going off (automatic suspension, whereas an underage drinking violation would have been more of a slap on the wrist under the school’s 3-strike rule). Disciplinary hearing first week spring semester, S ends up with a deferred suspension and 1-yr probation (could still attend classes but banned from entering all campus dorms other than to eat in the dining hall (in the basement of one of the freshman dorms), and was told that even a minor disciplinary violation could result in expulsion). </p>
<p>Rec’d a call from S about a week later: “Mom, I just wanted to let you know before you heard from someone else…” (he had just run into the Housing Director in the lobby of one of the banned freshman dorms where he had been waiting for some friends which somehow also involved playing pool - and was now afraid that he would be turned in for violating his probation).</p>
<p>^ So did he get turned in?</p>
<p>On a more benign note, my kids apparently think that I am a 24-hour, phone in GPS service. I am always getting calls while they are in various parts of the country/world, along the lines of, “Mom, I’m hungry and I’m running late. Can you check to see if there are any restaurants near (some small town) where I can grab a quick meal?” (by the time I have ascertained where he is, he’s driven past whatever exit he could take, of course).</p>
<p>My favorite might be when my d. called me from a rickshaw in Delhi, on her way to catch a flight to Dharamsala, wanting to know which airport she needed to tell the driver to go to, there being at least 2 different airports in different directions to choose from.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Mom… sob, big breath, I… sob, don’t… sob, know what to do… sob, </p>
<p>“About what honey? What are we talking about?”</p>
<p>I… sob, big breath, just… sob, miss [no-good-ex-boyfriend-who-broke-her-heart] so much…</p>
<p>(That stupid boy has caused so much pain. I have friends who tell me they wasted lots of time on a bad boy, but this creep needs to graduate and go. He’s in his 6th year of an undergraduate physchology degree; shouldn’t he be finished soon?)</p>
<p>
Mstee, you don’t know the half of it. ;)</p>
<p>Two gems (actual phone calls) from S2 on his annual HS ski trip:</p>
<p>2009
S2: You know how you told me to rent a helmet? Well I actually took your advice and rented one. It was a good thing because it saved my life several times.</p>
<p>2010<a href=“yesterday%20afternoon”>/u</a>
S2: You remember that tree I hit this morning? Well the pain wasn’t too bad, so I did several more runs. I was OK until the last run when I jumped off a cliff and landed on my bad leg…</p>