Let me tell ya'll a story 'bout a man named...

Sorry, wrong story.

Anyway, I have a co-worker who must remain nameless (of course), who told me an interesting tale about her elderly aunt and uncle the other day.

These folks lived next to a local college and from what I gather, their backyard was adjacent to the campus. Now, as I have mentioned, these folks were elderly. The uncle was on oxygen and the aunt was, what in another time would have been known as "of nervous disposition."

They were doing some construction work at the college one spring day while the aunt was in the kitchen washing dishes or some such. Suddenly she sees a strange man come walking across their backyard carrying something. She panicked, thinking they were being robbed (remember the nervous disposition?) and called 911. She changed her mind, either realizing that the stranger was not a robber or just calming down on her own and hung up the phone.

Unfortunately the call had already gone through.

And of course she was no longer on the line.

Now, I'm not sure what the procedure is at the 911 center when something like that happens, but this was in the early days of the 911 system around here. They dispatched an ambulance and the police.

The ambulance arrived first and found the uncle sitting on the front porch with his oxygen mask on.

They promptly loaded the confused man up in the ambulance and took him to the hospital.

When they got there and figured out nothing was wrong with him, they called his son to come pick him up.

The son asked to speak to him and asked his father why he was at the hospital.

He said "I don't know! They just came and got me and brought me here!"