Neighbors Rescue Man! World Gone Mad!
Another emergency, another news story about ...(dramatic pause)… regular people behaving exactly as they normally do.
In Cape Cod yesterday, an ambulance got stuck in the snow on its way to help a man who had collapsed outside his home. Out of the haze, an untrained force of neighbors appeared. Five neighbors used snow blowers to clear the road ahead while the others dug out the snow around the ambulance with snow shovels. It took two hours, but the elite squad of regular people and emergency medical technicians eventually got the man out, and he’s doing fine.
I like stories like these, but it is always intriguing how they are portrayed as exceptional. We know by now that the people who do most of the rescuing in big emergencies are regular people. God love ‘em.
When I give talks about my book, people often ask me about how they should prepare for a disaster, what they should have in their “kits,” etc. I tell them: Put batteries in your smoke detector. Exercise. Get good insurance. And if your neighbors invite you over, drop the duct tape and go, man, go.
This year, I’m proud to report, we got invited to three neighborhood holiday parties--all on our block, and we went to all of them. Finally some advice I can follow while drinking wine…
Robin Parker said on December 21, 2009 at 5:30 pm
So true! We just moved into a new house, and my goal is to bring holiday cookies to all of the neighbors before the end of the year. Goodies are a good excuse to knock on people’s doors.
Amanda Ripley said on December 22, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Good one, Robin. The People love food! And very smart to set a deadline. There is a window of opportunity for that sort of thing, and in the tumult of moving, I often miss it.... If you show up with baked goods on a random Tuesday in April, six mos after you moved, it just feels weird…
Robin Parker said on January 02, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Progress Report:
Rather than just bringing cookies, we decided to revive the old tradition of the New Year’s Day Open House and invite our neighbors.
So I printed 60 little invitation fliers and taped them to the doors of nearly all the houses within a block of us. When it looked like people were home I would knock on the door, introduce myself, and hand them the invitation personally. That was really the biggest challenge, because everyone assumes that you’re a salesperson or signature-gatherer when you knock on their door with a stack of fliers in your hand.
It turned out to be a great event. From noon until the evening hours, neighbors wandered in and out, bringing us bottles of wine, nibbling on crackers, cheese, and black-eyed peas, and telling us about the neighborhood.
I’d call it a success!