The Widder Curry Thanks You for Your Replies

Earlier this week my “editor-dude” published my story asking you what you would have done in a situation that I found myself in a few days earlier.   I was curious to see if there was a difference in the “male” way of looking at the situation vs the “female” way of looking at it.  I was a little surprised by the outcome.

There were 92 respondents – several on the OB Rag; more on “Next Door” and a few more on Facebook.  I also had eight telephone calls regarding the problem.  Of the 92, 78 were women and 14 were men.  I was very surprised by total answers given to me. Let me share with you:

A brief synopsis of the situation was that I had not been able to reach someone that I spoke to every day for the past 4 years. When I tried his telephones (2) they were shut off.  He lives in a very rural area, outside of California, with no near neighbors.  Hunting is allowed near his property because of the deer and coyotes that frequently roam.  Since I could not reach him for such a long period of time I became very worried and agonized as to what to do.  I truly expected that he was badly injured – or even worse – dead.

When I asked you (the reader) what your suggestion was it almost unanimous.

The first thing people said was to call the neighbors, but there are none. Then most people said I should call the sheriff for a “well check.”  Three people suggested that I do nothing – two men and one woman.  And that surprised me. I fully expected more males to say to leave it alone.

I had sent my friend a text message, an email, and left a voice message saying that if I did not hear from him by noon on Monday I would call the sheriff to check on him.

I finally called the Sheriff.  I knew of her and knew that my friend did not care for her, but I felt that she was a better person to check on him than someone he did not know, in case he needed help.

It turned out that he was not home; the house was locked up; the animals had plenty of feed.  There was no sign of foul play and when she asked me for permission to enter the house I did not give it.  In the first place, I had no authority to grant permission; there are “no trespassing” signs all over the property, and I felt that if there had been a problem it would have been apparent outside – not inside.

At the last moment she had another sheriff come out and he was tall enough to look into the garage window and see that the car was not there.

What floored me, and continues to do so was his reaction.  Three days after this episode I received a scathing note telling me that it was –

“stupid of you to call the sheriff.  I don’t want them trespassing on my property.  If I have both phones shut off it is for a reason.  I am fine.”

This, in spite of the fact we have talked every day for four years except for two days and he did not tell me that he would be unavailable.

To tell you what transpired since then is worse – from my  stand point – in that I have been instructed to “drop dead”; “don’t ever call again”, etc.  (I cleaned up the language.)

My purpose for writing the entire scenario was because I wanted to know if what I did was really so terrible.  Thank you for the vindication.  And … if you can’t get in touch with me after several days, feel free to call anyone you can reach to do a well person check on me.  It’s okay.