Part of my job as a 911 dispatcher is to interrogate callers who are in various states of panic so I can send the appropriate emergency equipment.
One day a woman called to say that a family member had fallen and needed to go to a hospital. After finding out where she lived and assuring her that the paramedics would arrive shortly, I asked her, “Do you know what caused the fall?”
“No,” the woman nervously replied. “What?”
After finishing an out-of-town errand, I discovered that my car wouldn’t start because it was out of gas. A passer-by told me there was a service station a half-mile away, so I took a gas can from the trunk and trudged the distance in the sweltering sun.
The attendant filled my two-gallon can, and I lugged it back and poured the gas into the tank. But when I tried to unlock the car door, it wouldn’t open. Just then, I noticed an identical old car parked a short distance away. That was my car; I had filled a stranger’s gas tank.
Wearily I walked back to the station. “You know,” the attendant suggested helpfully, “instead of walking back and forth to fill the tank from the can, you could put a couple of gallons in the tank and then drive the car here.”
I have been working on my PhD in engineering for the past five years, but my kids don’t necessarily see that as work. As we were driving past Walmart one day, my son spotted a Now Hiring sign and suggested that I could get a job there.
Hoping to make a point, I asked, “Do you think they’re looking for an engineer?”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “They’ll hire anybody.”