Duh..mbass

Some spark of clarity had me type "stories from my past" into google. Voila! All the stuff I was looking for yesterday. See, I search weird. I actually thought "autobiographical blog" would find well, a shitload of autobiographical blogs. Yeah.

One autobiographical blog, found under "stories from my past" tells the story of this poor guy's house catching fire, and the kindness of strangers. I'm bringing it up here because (heh) my life is still a soap opera. Interesting things happen around me. I'm lucky that I get to interact with life in neato ways.

Although Random Redhead is all about one decade, I have stories from my more recent past, too. The fire-victim-guy reminded me of my poor neighbor across the street.

This woman had problems. She moved onto our street after divorcing her abusive bum of a husband. She began dating a man who owned his own construction business. That's a polite way of saying he had a truck, a logo, and some friends. The man was a bit down on his luck, business wise; so he set his girlfriend's house on fire.

See why I live in the city? Stuff like that rarely happens in the county.

Living directly across the street from her, I noticed the smoke. The fire truck pulled up as I was grabbing the phone to call 911. It's nice to have a fire station a few blocks away. The firefighters did their job and drove away. Us neighbors polled each other for C's work number. Nobody had it. Nobody even knew where she worked.

I spent several hours fretting over my neighbor coming home and finding half her house gone. It just wasn't right. Somebody should tell her, and no one knew where to find her.
Around 2 in the afternoon, a Red Cross van pulled up outside her house. "How nice," I thought. I didn't know the red cross showed up for a simple house fire. I felt reassured. They would know how to council C far better than I would.
I waited. The red cross waited. C was working late. It was cold outside, and that van had been sitting there for hours. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I made a huge thermos of hot chocolate, grabbed some coffee cups and went out to the van.

The red cross comes prepared. They already had warm drinks, and everything else they needed. They were used to waiting. I was still standing by the van with my small offering of cocoa, when C finally came home.
I didn't know what to do, so I poured a cup for her and her daughter. The red cross people looked at me like I was a particularly smelly pile of dung, and I realized I'd committed yet another faux pas.

In hindsight, I think C was glad I was there. She hugged me, cried all over me, and didn't spill a single drop of the hot chocolate. She took me on a tour of her burned home, and we agreed the damage wasn't too bad. (the smell, on the other hand was awful) She didn't let the red cross help her until after she had walked through her house, drank some cocoa, used my phone and toured her house a second time. Only then was she able to acknowledge the presence of a charity.
I hope the red cross is used to that too.