Years ago, I was driving down US 23 in Michigan near Ann Arbor when up ahead a car accident occurred. When I neared the accident I pulled over and as I was pulling over I noticed that the gentleman in the accident was already out of the car, sitting on the ground near his driver side rear tire with his head on his palms. His head was bleeding and he was shaking. When he pulled his head up from his palms I immediately thought, "holy shit, that's Dave".
Dave worked for the same restaurant group that I did and was childhood friends with one of my closest friends.
"Dave are you alright?"
"Steve?" My being there confused him but he replied, "Yeah, I'm fine but Julie.... Julie is pregnant."
Daves wife was in the passenger seat, sitting still not wanting to move without the say so of the paramedics. I spoke to Julie and reassured her that Dave was alright, just a couple of scratches and that she too was likely fine. I then relayed to Dave that Julie was fine and that the ambulance would arrive shortly and although they were both likely fine, they would need to go to the hospital. Dave understood but then looked at me and said, "what about the dogs."
Their two Golden Retrievers were in the back seat of the car and amazingly, given the scope of the accident, they seemed fine. I told Dave not to worry, that I would take care of the dogs. I walked to my car and got the strap off of my computer bag and strapped it to the collar of the first dog and walked her to my car. She got in without a problem.
By now traffic was moving pretty quickly again. When I was attempting to get the dogs I tried to enlist the help of one of the policeman that was there. He refused to go near the dogs and was extremely rude about it. There was a fireman nearby that noticed and helped to guard the door while I opened it. But despite his best efforts, when the door opened to get the second dog, it darted past us and almost ran straight in to oncoming traffic.
Julie, now on a stretcher saw this and screamed "NOOOOO".
Just before the dog made it past the firetruck and into the oncoming cars, a fireman dove a la Bobby Or or Pete Rose and wrapped his arms around the dog.
There is no doubt that he saved that dogs life. I'm sure I'm not conveying how amazing it was to witness. But keep in mind that only a few moments prior a policeman refused to even go near that dog and here was a fireman diving, sprawled out and tackling it in order to save it's life.
"That was amazing," is all I could come up with. And it was.
I took the dogs to the vet and they were fine. Dave and Julie were fine too, just a bit cut up and bruised. Their baby was also healthy and fine. A few weeks later I got a nice postcard from Dave and Julie and their dogs thanking me.
There haven't been a lot of times when I felt like fate wanted me somewhere but that was one of them.
I try to always stop when I can and help when people need it. It really does come back in spades.
When is a time you've spontaneously been called to action?
About three weeks ago, my wife, my daughter and I were heading to a nearby coffee shop/bookstore. I was driving. As we headed over an overpass spanning a stretch of the interstate, I saw a guy climbing the railing, clearly getting ready to jump. The drop is, I dunno, 35 feet, maybe? So it's unclear as to whether he would have died. Then again, it was just before rush hour, traffic was going at a pretty good clip, so he very well could have hit a car, and a lot of people could have been very hurt. Anyhow, as soon as I saw this, I yelled "oh shit," put the car into park without giving any warning to my wife or the drivers behind me, jumped out of the car and... ambled over to the guy, who had one leg over the rail. You don't really want to run towards a guy in that position. Asked him how he was doing, if he needed any help. He's clearly homeless, smells like booze, crying. Starts talking about how he's fucked his life up, how nobody cares about him, how he just wants to die. I try telling him how I care about him at that moment, he just keeps going on about how I don't even know him. Gets the other leg over the rail, I tell him to look at me, which thankfully he does. Gives me some time and his attention span, I start talking about how we all kind of stumble through life, how all of us are fuckups. He's not really buying it, but he's not jumping yet, so that's okay. I don't want him to get any further, but I also don't want to try and grab him by myself and get pulled over the side or something. What the hell are you supposed to say to get somebody to not jump? Meanwhile, a bus driver had pulled over across the street and had clearly called 911 on his cell. I was surreptitiously motioning for him to come over, and when he got of the phone, he came up behind the guy. Traffic is stopped on I-5, which is good, but people are starting to gawk, which is bad. A police car is pulled up in front of traffic, and officer helpful gets on that big, blaring loudspeaker and squawks something completely incomprehensible at us. Sure sounds threatening though, thanks. At this point, the guy on the railing starts shifting his weight. So without really giving any warning, and in blessed conjunction with bus driver, I grab one arm, he grabs another, I say something trite like "I'm just gonna help you back over, okay?" and we drag him back to the sidewalk. He immediately starts screaming and crying "no no no" and this sheriff, a lady, swoops out of nowhere, goes, "good, now get him on the ground," kicks the back of his knees out and presses him face first into the ground, where's he's handcuffed. You can imagine how off-putting this was to me, who just spouted all this jive about how I cared about him and that he was going to be okay. The best I could do was rub his back as he was surrounded by law enforcement. I looked around and realized we were ringed by cop cars. Crazy. You know what the hell of it is? I don't really feel good about any of it. This guy, he was in bad shape, physically and emotionally and financially. And he was miserable after we pulled him back over. Who's to say I didn't doom him to another few days, weeks, months or years of abject misery? As a homeless guy, he has precious few choices that he can make for himself. Maybe he'd decided that enough was enough, and this was his final act of empowerment. And then some bougey family guy swoops out of nowhere acting like a goddamn hero and drags him away from his last bid at freedom from misery. Family guy gets to go home and feel Important, but this guy has to spend the night in inpatient, then go back onto the streets and back to hard living and desperate choices. Stop a guy from killing himself, but then take no ownership in the betterment of his life after that. Seems pretty crass to me .How am I supposed to feel about this? I certainly don't feel like I did something great. My wife tells me that the way I can think about it is that even if he did truly want to die, and even if that would have saved him, he could easily have taken out some innocent driver in the process, maybe some passengers. So there's that, I guess.
So I dated a girl whose entire family were psychoanalysts. Three of them worked in public health in Seattle. Here's how it works: 1) Homeless person demonstrates that they are a threat to themselves 2) Homeless person is taken into custody (NOT arrested) where they are ruled for short term competency 3) Court reviews evidence to determine if there is enough to qualify the person for a 48 hour hold (in california it's 72 - the infamous 5150\) 4) Person is remanded to a hospital for observation, testing, and short term treatment 5) IF (big if) the person is judged to be a long-term threat to their own health, and IF (bigger if) said person can be convinced to receive treatment, THEN person becomes an inpatient at a public health hospital where they are treated for their condition and released when either they complete treatment, choose to discontinue treatment or fail to comply with treatment. Cops don't take a shine to crazy people because they're unpredictable and often spit and bite and claw and throw poop and stuff. There was a guy who was one of my girlfriend's dad's patients who blocked off 2nd avenue for an hour with an f'ing sword. That doesn't mean they aren't getting them help, it just means they aren't being tender about it. You did the right thing. You saved a life. That's not nothing.
First of all, nice work. You did the right thing and had a clear enough head to make all the appropriate choices in an inappropriate situation. My guess is that if he had wanted to do it, he would have. Period. He needed you and you were there to "save" him. Some people just want to know that they are worth saving. If you are really concerned about him, perhaps you could reach out to the police dept and find out who he was and how, if at all, you could help. They may not be able to give that info, but it may also be public information if he committed a crime. Then, buy the guy lunch, listen to him. My guess is that you'll get as much, if not more, out of the experience than he will. Again, nice work!
While walking two blocks from my car to my job I saw a woman struggling with a man. They were basically wrestling standing up while arguing, he was getting the better of her. It seemed to be a domestic dispute that had crossed the line. I didn't really know how to intervene, or weather my involvement would be appreciated by either of the parties. So I decided I'd let the women call the shots. "Do you need assistance Ma'me?" was what I asked. Seems like a somewhat lame line, but she answered in a desperate yes. I am a pretty big guy, 6'2" and probably a more svelte 200 lbs at the time, and the other fella was more on the average side. I simply thrust my arm between the two of them, used the space I made to get my other arm in, and popped them apart. I wrapped the woman up in my arms and started moving her towards my work. The guy tried to get me off her but she cooperated and let me keep my bulk between the two of them. The guy was tearing at my arms and whatnot, but he didn't strike any blows. When we got to my work I pushed her through the doors put my back to the door. The man cursed at and threatened me until the police showed up. When the cops came he got into a truck parked on the street and drove off (the cops were disinterested in the whole affair and made no effort to stop the guy). I had an interim manager at the time, the previous boss had some kind of nervous breakdown and just stooped coming to work, who was a survivor of domestic abuse. She helped the lady clam down and arrange transportation. It worked out great for me, my new boss took a real shine to me from that point on. Before this incident management seemed pretty suspicious of the employees, the whole place had become a pain in their ass, and we were all painted as part of the problem. After this happened the new boss and I were able to talk about what was going wrong and right at the business and get things pointed in a better direction (it was a family owned cafe, hard to explain what the dynamics were, but one sister ran it like a little doll house, when she lost her mind another sister came in to run it. The sister who came took over had no idea what was going on and based her view on the staff by her mentally ill sisters ramblings. The father was an Oregon timber millionaire who could give a shit about fucked up little cafe, and just wanted the whole thing to go away). The new sister prepared the place for sale, talked me up to the new buyers and I became the new general manager of the place. I don't know if that is a karma tale or what. What I do know is that when I see something like this going down my stomach sinks and I think "fuck....I don't want to get involved with this" and then I most the time I get involved. I sometimes regret butting my head into this kind of stuff, but I know that there are times I really regret not getting involved more. I remember walking home from a long shift as a line cook in Cambridge Mass, seeing a young man sitting on some steps going through an obviously terrible hallucinogenic trip. I have done more time then I ever wanted talking people through bad drug experiences. I was very tired, I just wanted to drop by the store to pick up a beer and go home. I knew I could help, but fuck it he did it too himself, I kept walking. While selecting my purchase from the coolers located in the back of the store I heard the front doors of the 7/11 shatter. It was my acid tripper. He lurched into the store like a deranged zombie, knocking cupcakes and chip racks hither and yon. It took less then a minute for the cops to come rushing through the door, slamming the kid around dropping him to the floor, and basically kicking the shit out of him in your normal excessive cop manner. The kid thrashed at his cuffs like a wild animal, bellowing incoherently, pained, scared and confused. I still feel terrible that I didn't stop to help that guy. It would have been a long lame night, but I'm sure that I could have gotten him calmed down and kept him safe. I know that it wasn't my duty, but it would have been the humane thing to do. I think that "I saw a car accident and didn't stop" might be a more interesting discussion, or at least might illuminate more about our character. I think it's our failures that really teach us things. This kid certainly taught me something about being humane, still bothers me to this day.
I'd say your first story definitely seems to be a good one regarding karma. Not sure I buy in to the whole karma thing, but that definitely ties nicely in to that theory. None the less, nice work. Sorry to hear about the LSD kid. I wouldn't think on it too much. Who knows, maybe the arrest led to something positive? Kid decides to straighten out his life? Maybe he met the man of his dreams in the cell? You never know, stranger things have happened.
I went to a bar to do some day-drinking with a girl I'd met in another city. I was living in Vietnam at the time and worked for a large corporate English center. As I pulled up to the bar, the bar maid came out and asked if I'd heard that my best friend, D had been in an accident. I said no, so I called D to make sure. I tried three times and each time, no answer. The barmaid told me he had been taken to the local hospital. This hospital is notorious for things that would never fly in a Western country. Not long before this, a woman had given birth to a child, but the child was born with the cord wrapped around its neck. This is something relatively easy to correct, but you do have to know how to take care of it. However, her doctor was busy watching the World Cup and told the nurse to leave him alone. He told her to leave him alone enough times that the baby died. I did some work with some people in the local government, who told me that that particular hospital received $5 million in aid annually, but the hospital never saw it, since the senior doctors in charge of the hospital simply lined their pockets. As a result, it was filthy and the equipment hadn't been replaced since the country re-opened to trade in the early '90's. No foreigner would go there willingly. Instead, they would choose to go to the clinic run by one of the oil companies, or to the Russian run hospital. If my friend had ended up there, it couldn't have been good. I asked the girl I was with to come with me to the hospital as my Vietnamese wasn't so great and thankfully, she agreed. At the hospital we spoke to the receptionist. The city I lived in was small enough that most of the foreigners living there knew each other. If you didn't work with me, you worked for either a smaller English center, or on the oil rigs. We asked if a foreigner had been brought in. When she said that one had, I told her that I was a friend. She had me fill out some forms. I asked if they had any of D's personal effects, as I was unsure of some of his information. What she handed to me was a pair of blood stained shorts that reeked of piss. They were still damp. Gingerly, I fished the wallet out of the pocket and pulled the ID. The name I read wasn't D's. Instead, it was a guy that had arrived in our office a month or so back. The way hospitals work in Vietnam is, you go in as a patient and if you don't have the money for treatment, they throw you out. There is no food served in them, so outside of hospitals you will see food stalls. You might have heard that antibiotic resistant TB is on the rise in Southeast Asia. This is one of the reasons why. Patients go out to the food stalls for meals and at best, the owners simply rinse off the dishes in a large tub of water and leave them in the sun to dry. Some don't even do that. Anyway, this guy was unconscious. It turns out that someone on had stopped short in front of his motorcycle, launching him through a gap in the median into oncoming traffic where he was run over by a passenger van. The doctors were waiting to treat him because no one had yet shown up with any money. So, to get the process started, I forked over the cash and called our manager, who told me to wait a bit since she had to call head office. Over the next 6 hours or so the doctor kept asking for more money as they figured out how best to proceed with treatment until finally, they couldn't do any more. I had to decide whether or not to wait to see if he improved, or choose to move him to Ho Chi Minh City, about 3 hours away. As the guy looked grey and I could hear things rattling in his chest as he struggled to breathe, I chose to move him to Ho Chi Minh City. During that 6 hours, my manager kept promising to send someone to relieve me, but no one ever showed. On the ride to the city, lights and sirens going we had to stop three times for people who wouldn't make way. During this time the guy finally woke up and was begging me to get him something for the pain, but any more painkillers and there was a good chance that he would die, or so I was told. His catheter had also been jostled as we hoisted him on to the gurney and then into the ambulance and his scrotum was filling up with fluid until it was roughly the size of a pink grapefruit. He apologized for being a dick and eventually settled into a low moaning that still makes me shiver when I think about it. When we finally got to the hospital, the doctor that rode with us stuck out his hand. As I went to shake it, he looked confused and then asked me for more money. I ignored him and pushed my co-worker into the hospital. After the sun came up I got a call from head office. After much bullshit and sending a representative down to check things out, I was told that I was on my own and that I would have to pay for the treatment out of my own pocket as they didn't want to get involved. Eventually my co-worker lapsed into a coma and died two days later. His lungs had been badly, badly shredded by the passenger van. In Vietnam, if a driver hits a pedestrian, it is seen as their fault unless they can prove otherwise. Somehow, the van driver found out where my co-worker had been taken and showed up. Fortunately someone came forward and told the police (who hadn't given a flying fuck that there was an accident in the first place, but only showed up when they thought they could make some money out of it) that someone had stopped short, caused the accident and then sped off. Anyway, my company arranged a cremation and arranged visas for the guy's family. Visas only cost $40 for a one month single-entry and the hospital was going to cremate my co-worker anyway as no one claimed the body and they understood that I sure as hell was not going to take it. All the company did was to let people know that they should gather at a certain place and pay for lunch. About $4 a head for maybe 20 people. At the funeral, before the body had even been taken, my manager's supervisor, asked that the family pay me back for all the expenses, right then and there. I hadn't even met them yet and there I am quoting what their son and brother's last, agonizing days on earth had cost me. To top it all off, a weird love triangle developed between me, the girl and a friend who had no interest in her, but she later ditched me because I was "too sad." Two weeks after all this happened, the big boss that asked the family to pay me back told me that my numbers weren't satisfactory and that they weren't renewing my contract. I'm glad I tried to help my co-worker, in spite of everything. Although, if I'm being honest, I often question if I reacted properly and with enough speed. The answer I come up with usually is, "no." I don't blame myself for his death, but I do think there's more that I could have done to prevent it and I can only hope that I'll never have to do anything like that again. I hope his family got some closure by going to that funeral and I'm really sorry that I never got to know the guy; I'm sorry that I wrote him off as just another drunk looking for whores and sunshine. It turns out that he was a great guy. He was one of the few foreigners that bothered to try to hang out with the locals. He'd play football (soccer) with the local guys that worked on the oil rigs and when he found out that one of them didn't have enough money for a welding mask, he bought him one. When the man protested, my co-worker, though speaking no Vietnamese was able to communicate that he enjoyed being able to play football with those guys and that was payment enough. I only found this out after my co-worker died through a student that sometimes played football with some of those guys. Sometimes, when things happen you just have to lend a hand even if it might turn out badly. Someday it could be you. I tried. I don't know how much I helped, but I promise I tried.
I feel the attempt. And know that no matter how ugly shit looks, there will always be people trying -- I can't say that for everyone else, but there are a certain few who will. Thanks brother. That could've been my father, son, husband, or friend. And it means a lot.
You tried, which is more than many people would do. Thank you for sharing this.
My family went to Maine when I was 17. Ostensibly it was to look at colleges. Mostly it was to go to Maine. I had a new pair of Rollerblades that didn't fit me and I wanted to be far away from my family so I rolled into town. "Town" being New Harbor, Maine, which had a population of maybe 3,000. I found a pizza place with an extremely hot girl in her 20s wearing a Skinny Puppy shirt. I was stricken. She was not. We talked a little, but then I ended up talking to the owner of the pizza place. He was 18, which was cool, and we talked a lot about Industrial music. He had a really nice girlfriend and we basically hung out and chatted until dark. I got to meet several of the locals - there was a group of maybe five of them. About six o'clock somebody told the owner something that worried him, but he shrugged it off, and we continued to chat, hang out and play Neo Geo for free because he had the key to the machine. I wandered across the way and bought us booze because I never got carded. Then about eight o'clock four coked-out roid-rage lobster fishermen kicked open the door (it was unlocked), grabbed the counter with the cash register on it and pulled it out of the wall/floor sending the register and computer crashing to the floor and circled around the five or so people in the room. "Everybody get the fuck out," one of them said. The owner looked scared shitless. His girlfriend looked worse. The other three people in the room looked down and filtered out the door. "You need to get out of here, this isn't your problem," one of the fishermen said to me. "Seems like you have a problem with my friend, that makes it my problem," I heard myself saying. He looked at me for a moment and said "fine, you can stay," and then sort of stumbled through a few threats about selling drugs to his daughter and fucking up the owner and such. And then, mojo succinctly taken, they stumbled out of the business. "Dude, thank you," the owner said to me. "They weren't serious," I said. "No, they were," he said, and called 911. Long story short, there isn't much to do in New Harbor Maine except drugs and all the fishermen preferred coke. This one guy's daughter was a known tweaker who had been caught by her dad with LSD. Dad didn't care so much that she was doing LSD but where it had come from, and rather than give up her dealer she'd fingered my buddy because all the lobster fishermen in town hated the 18 year old kid with a pizza business and a Neo Geo machine. The guy had served time for battery before and, at the trial six months later, ended up earning himself another 3. I spent another week or so hanging out with them. He and his new girlfriend later drove clear from Maine to Washington to see me. He does Post Audio in New York now; we still trade emails and christmas cards.
I never commented on this? interesting story KB, I particularly like that you are still in touch with him. It's funny how life works, you never know when you'll meet someone that will stay with you. You know? Friends and acquaintances weave their ways in and out of our worlds. Sometimes with little notice and other times they weave in when a fisherman smashes a cash-register to the ground.
I've never been on the scene to help anyone, but I did help my mother-in-law come to terms with what she had done after helping out on the scene of an accident. Last year, on Father's Day weekend, she was driving down to pick up her teenage daughter for a visit. As she was driving along the highway, she saw a MAC truck lose control (we think the driver had fallen asleep) and plow into a car. Minutes before the accident, this man's car had gotten a flat tire. He pulled over and started changing the tire with the help of his son. The son would have been 10-12 years old. His daughter, probably around 6, had stayed in the car. The son had moved a few feet from the back of the car for some reason, and the daughter moved to sit in the driver's seat. The MAC truck hit the father. By the time my mother-in-law had parked and gotten out of her car (grabbing a blanket she had in the back), the daughter was attempting to get out of the car. She covered the girl in the blanket, trying to shield her face, because the girl had to walk through the remains of her father to get to a safe area. The son apparently went into older brother mode, and just kept trying to calm his sister down. She just kept saying, "I've just lost my daddy." My mother-in-law got in touch with the mother and followed the ambulance to the hospital. She's a preacher, so she knew a little bit of what to say to the kids. By the time she arrived at my house, the adrenaline was gone and she was a wreck. I was the only adult in the house not at work, so she turned to me to talk about it. She had turned to religion when one of her children had died at an early age, but these two children losing their father 10 hours before Father's Day really shook her up. I'm not religious, but just kept telling her that she was obviously supposed to be there at that time. She seems to be doing better now. She's friends with the kids on Facebook and even went to the little girl's birthday party.
That's really heart wrenching. I'm not sure how it is you console someone after witnessing something like that, but I think you are right that she was somehow meant to be there. Your mother in law sounds like a wonderful woman. Those poor kids. Thank you for sharing that.
Spontaneously? Almost never. Once in third grade when my teacher had a grand mal seizure during a lesson and conked his head on the blackboard. I got a pair of box turtles from my parents as a reward for having the presence of mind to go for the school nurse while the rest of the class was still panicking and milling in circles. They lived for ten years after that, not the 50+ I had hoped for, but they were probably wild-caught as adults, so that wasn't so bad. One of them might still be alive out in the wild somewhere -- he didn't come up from hibernation one year and I don't know if he died or escaped. Other than that, a lot of planning goes into "spontaneous" moments like that for me. I spent 8 years volunteering intensively for an animal rescue group, including 3 years on the BoD. Went on a lot of cruelty calls. Called a lot of emergency vets. Occasionally grabbed a panicking horse before it hurt someone. Now I'm a victim advocate. I spend most on-call nights hoping the pager doesn't go off because I really don't want to be bothered in the moment, but when it does I always wind up glad that I was called, because I get to really help people.
Man, everyone here has an inside group in Michigan, while I sit out here in Seattle. Ugh. I try to stop and help whenever I can too, and I always try to portray myself as friendly, but to be honest I've yet to come upon a seriously memorable situation. Once I was skiing with my friends, and after a day of experienced level runs we decided to take the green back to the schoolbus, and on the way we passed a lady who couldn't get up after she had fallen. She asks us for help, but my friend goes "No! They'll leave without us!" and left. I was dumbfounded, helped her up (it obviously took less than a minute), and needless to say I was mad at my friend. I also wasn't late. It was a popular ski resort, and she definitely wasn't in any trouble (for non-skiiers, she could've just unstrapped her skis, stood up, then step in again) it was just a matter of convenience on her end and selflessness on my end. Considering I don't even have my driver's license yet (permit yo) I think I've still got some time left. :) When the situation arrives, you bet I'll stop. EDIT: Holy shit! I completely forgot I once got someone not to kill themselves! Damn, that was two years ago, I can't believe I forgot. EDIT 2: I wrote that first edit on my off period at school, so I couldn't go into detail. Now that I'm home, I'll try to expand a little. The thing is, I don't know how to write about it without one: needlessly making myself sound like a 'hero' or two: disrespecting the person's privacy. In theory though, it's really simple. I'm a huge fan of Summer Glau.. like big big big fan. Like, I can recite her life story better than my own. I know what she looks for in a guy before I can say what I look for in a gal. I have to stop and think for those things about myself. Anyways, I was on a YouTube video only to find someone being super verbal about what they'd "do to her". I shoot him a message about how that might be interpreted as disrespect, especially how she's known to be saddened by hateful messages. I mean, who wouldn't be? I won't go into detail but there are some nasty things said against her. Show killer, downs syndrome, etc. So he messages back (paraphrasing here, with his spelling mistakes fixed) "I don't care. I'm killing myself tomorrow anyways." with a photo of what I presume was his room, with a noose, and a 4chan style timestamp showing the actual date. I respond right away "no man, what's wrong? Dude, I love Summer too. Talk to me." all the while trying to find out more about him from his username. I didn't get much, a few accounts from websites, but what I did find out was this: this guy is whatever I feel about Summer Glau, times ten. He'd felt she was amazing years before I did. Right after the first episode of Firefly aired, this guy had been set. He knew more than I did about her.. much more. He was more articulate and open about this. Earlier on, he was the sweetest person, but everything was borderline unhealthy obsession. "I love you more than air" was the first thing he had ever commented, on any video, in 2005. This was right after YouTube even came out, mind you. This was Firefly was still airing! I don't know, slowly it seemed he had gone insane. All this I learned that night, the next morning I woke up to a reply. A long written message about how he had come to terms that he'd obviously never be with Summer Glau. "You don't know that! You know just as well as me how nice she is. As long as you and her are both alive, there's always the possibility you'll get to know her!" I responded. She's so sweet, if you wanted to be her friend you'd get to be her friend! I came to know him, and I came to be good friends with him. Well, as good as YouTube messaging friends can get. He went back to 'normal', his messages weren't about her "smelly gorgeous pussy" but they went back to "her amazing smile". A day passed, than a week, than two. I talked with him about other things, movies, games, etc. It was all great, that I this guy, that this nice guy was still nice and well. My only regret is not asking for more information. Once I asked what state he was in, he said "I'd rather not say." About a year later, he never responded to my latest message. He stopped making comments on the YouTube account. I only knew his first and last name, and that he was in the US. I wish I could end with "I still keep up with him", but the truth is all I have is every message we ever sent each other on YouTube. huh... That's life I guess. For this I was caught off guard. I winged it and improvised, I can only thank whoever is out there that it worked. Since then, I've gotten a lot more resources. For instance, if something happens online again I have this to link to. Etc. The situation hasn't presented itself yet, but that itself is a good thing. In the unfortunate event someone is considering it, I'll be prepared. I'll be ready.
Also, nice work helping the woman skier and GREAT work helping to convince someone to not kill themselves. -pretty important stuff.Man, everyone here has an inside group in Michigan, while I sit out here in Seattle. Ugh.
-The funny part is that most of the MI people on Hubski don't live there anymore and are spread out throughout the country.