Call Home Before the League Game

I just want to set the story straight. I mean the story Dave told a couple of posts ago, in It’s a League Game, Smokey. Here’s my side: I needed the car, because I had book club that evening. Book club doesn’t start until 8:15 p.m., when the group’s kids are asleep. So I don’t tend to get home until 10:45 p.m. As you may know, and as Dave mentioned, we only have one car. But since Dave has an EcoPass, it’s no problem for him to get home on the bus. He likes to sit at the Laughing Goat and putz around on his laptop after work, so he assured me he could take the Jump home from the downtown bus station. I met him at the Goat after work and hung out for a while before heading over to pick up my friend Becki. I said, “I’ll be home at 10:45. See you then!” We had a really good evening: we’d read Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, by Diablo Cody, who wrote the screenplay for Juno. Nobody really liked the book, but we had a lot of thoughts about the stripping underworld, as well as what was wrong with the book, since most of us liked Juno.

Anyway, I dropped Becki off and skipped dropping off my library book because I’d said I’d be home at 10:45. I walked in the door right on time, but it was clear that Dave wasn’t home. No lights on. “Weird,” I thought, and went to do the dishes. He still wasn’t home when I finished, so I was starting to get a bit worried. I turned on the computer so that I could check the bus schedule. Since he wasn’t home yet, he had clearly missed the last Jump. However, the Dash had one more route out to Lafayette that was supposed to arrive at 11:46 p.m. I decided to wait up and drive over to the Park N Ride, which is about half a mile away, to pick Dave up. He picked me up there once, unexpectedly, and it was really a pleasure. So I picked up Twilight, which I had just started. Our friend Emily is passing around the series, and it was my turn. I left for the bus stop at 11:35. It was a little spooky to be sitting in a deserted parking lot reading about vampires near midnight, but I persevered. The bus arrived right on time, but Dave didn’t get off. Now there was no way for him to get home, unless I found him! But I couldn’t drive to Boulder and look around, I thought.

Of course, by then I was so nervous I could hardly drive the half mile back home. I kept wildly alternating between “he can take care of himself; he’s very resourceful” and “anyone can be hit by a car!” I walked in the door and tried to imagine how one actually calls hospitals. What number do you call? Do they have a number for nervous wives, where you can just check the name without feeling like an idiot? The thing about fear is, you stop caring so much about looking bad. Once, in a cave, several of us were slightly lost, and instead of carefully looking around for the “elephant trail” that dozens of feet had scraped up, I frantically insisted that our friend Pete blow his emergency whistle. Needless to say, I was utterly humiliated once we were found (only minutes later) and scolded for not being responsible cavers. But in the midst of the panic, I would’ve done anything to be found.

Anyway, I didn’t call the hospital. Instead, I tried our friend Elijah, who sometimes catches up with Dave at the coffee shop. Mind you, it was midnight, and I hated the idea of waking him—but I called anyway. He didn’t answer. So I looked up the phone number for the Laughing Goat, swallowed hard, and called. A woman answered. I tried to explain. “I can’t find my husband,” I gulped, “and I know he was there. Do you remember a guy typing on a laptop?” “Well,” she said, “everyone in here has a laptop.” (I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now. There are nine patrons and eight laptops.) I tried to explain that it was a silver laptop and that Dave has brown hair, glasses, and a gray jacket. He sounded kind of familiar, she thought, but…

In a panic, I squeaked out a “thank you” and hung up. About a minute later, the phone rang. It was Dave, who said that he was at the King Soopers at 287 and Baseline. I wound up there once, when I accidentally took the Erie Jump instead of the one to Lafayette. “Catch the wrong bus?” I asked, voice quivering. “I didn’t catch the bus,” he said. “I’ll pick you up right now,” I said. “Are you still dressed?” he asked? “Yes!” I said, and got in the car. When he got in the car, he told me his side of the story, the refused EcoPass, the quixotic walk eleven miles home. His raw inner thighs and foot blisters. His insistence on principle. (“It’s a league game, Smokey!”) Those of you who are thinking “good for him! Stick it to the man!” have obviously never tried to figure out if the hospital has a number for panic-stricken loved ones.

“But why couldn’t you call?” I asked, reasonably. “I didn’t pass a phone,” he responded. (I’m sure he thought, “reasonably.”) “But you could’ve left a message saying that you were going to walk home!” I insisted. “But I would’ve had to walk two blocks out of my way to get to a phone!” he exclaimed. “And our answering machine doesn’t always work!” True. But he still should’ve tried. And no, cell phones wouldn’t have necessarily solved the problem. I’ve heard plenty of people anxiously fretting “She won’t pick up her phone! I hope she’s okay!”

If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that one man’s principled journey is another woman’s evening of terror. Just call your loved ones if you’re coming home late!