11. Now I See
Originally published at Pittsburgh Girlie. You can comment here or there.
This morning we woke up to a frantic email from a friend. He was in London and had been mugged the night before. His flight was in a couple hours and the hotel wouldn’t let him leave until he settled his bill. Which he couldn’t do without his wallet.
About a bazillion red flags went off in my head, but I mostly kept them to myself. The Boy is generous, sometimes to a fault. If he can help he will and that’s great. Like, it’s already mid afternoon there, hotels keep credit cards on file for charges, why would he email friends individually instead of a mass cry for help, why…
He sent an email back with some questions only his friend would be able to answer. He asked me how to make a call overseas. I’ve only ever called overseas from Germany to home, but I have friends who know this stuff. It took me almost 4 tries to get him to just call his friend’s cell.
His line of thinking was, international call, mugged friend probably doesn’t have phone anymore, wasting time, need to help. And I get it, and he was making sure it wasn’t a scam before he sent anything. Still he had the Western Union webpage up.
I finally convince him that the call won’t cost us anything. It took him a second to see my line of thought. It’s probably a scam, twitter is telling me it’s a scam, the friend is probably still asleep, in bed, at home, in Pittsburgh, just call what do you have to lose.
He calls, the phone rings, the friend answers, “Oh, it’s you!?”
Yeah, totally a scam. If he had just listened to me 30 minutes ago I could have gone back to bed. Sleep, it’s a precious thing.