Category: This one time…

This one time… I woke up really early to go for a run. I was getting dressed when my wife got up too, and just as we were moving around, we heard this noise out on the back deck. Clomp, clomp, clomp.

Now, we’re used to noises out there — cats running around, jumping off furniture, fighting, that sort of thing. But this wasn’t cats. This was footsteps. And since nobody can access our deck except us, I thought, what on earth is going on?

I flicked on the exterior light, slid open the ranch slider, and sure enough — there’s a guy standing at the far end of our deck, jiggling the handle of another door, trying to get in.

I said, “Can I help you?”
And he goes, “I’m just trying to get into the cafeteria, but the door’s locked.”

I said, “This isn’t a cafeteria — this is my house. What are you doing here?”

He mumbled something, and as I got closer I noticed blood trickling down the side of his head. He had no shoes on, it was a very cold morning, and he just looked completely beaten up.

“Whoa,” I said, “what happened to you?”

He couldn’t really answer. I asked if had slept in the hedge last night, if he had been drinking, if he was on drugs. He couldn’t answer my questions.

At this point I figured the guy needed medical attention, so I called an ambulance. Explained the situation: there’s a confused man on my deck, blood on his head. They asked, “Is the wound actively bleeding?” No. “Is he conscious and alert?” Yes. Their answer: “We can’t send an ambulance. You’ll have to take him to the ER yourself or drop him home.”

Great. Thanks.

So I hung up and asked him for his address. He gave me one that wasn’t too far away, though he couldn’t explain how he got to my house. I thought, OK, fine, I’ll drive him.

We hopped in the car and about 7 or 8 minutes later pulled up at this house.
“Is this your house?” I asked.
“Yes, this is my house.”
“Who’s home?”
“My wife and my son.”

Which door should I knock on? He points to the back. Of course. As we walk up, a dog starts barking.
“Is that your dog?”
“Yes.”

Thankfully the dog was friendly. I knocked on the ranch slider, and at 5:30 in the morning, this poor woman in a nightgown opens the door, looking absolutely bewildered.

I said, “Hi, my name’s Sheldon. Is this your husband?”
She peers past me, sees him standing there shoeless, bloody, and dazed. “Yes… that’s my husband.”
“Right, well, I just found him at my house. He’s got a head injury, I think you should take him to the hospital.”
She goes, “Oh my god — he went out early to go fishing!”
“Uh, yeah. He didn’t quite make it.”

So I left him there, got back in the car, and went home.

A couple of hours later I was in my backyard again and found a pair of boots. His boots. I bagged them up, drove back to the house, and this time met his son. The son thanked me for returning him earlier, said his dad was at the hospital getting checked out, and thanked me again for bringing back the boots.

He said, “Can I get your contact details? I want to drop you off a box of beer.”
I told him I don’t drink.
He said, “OK, how about a pack of meat?”
Now that I said yes to.

The next day I messaged to check in and found out the full story: he’d parked his car with a boat trailer about a kilometre from my place, slipped on some rocks by the water, hit his head, got disoriented, and just wandered off — eventually ending up at my deck.

So no, I never got that run in that morning. But I did end up chauffeuring a half-dressed, concussed fisherman back home, returning his boots, and scoring a pack of meat. Not exactly the cardio I had in mind… but I’ll take it.

This one time my eldest son first saw butterfly knives on YouTube in a video in which a youtuber was doing the worlds best tricks.

After this he created his own website at beginnerbutterflyknives.com to see if he can help other people who are interested in learning how to do butterfly knife tricks.

Check it out!

This one time our middle son, Logan had recently turned 5 and he’s got quite the business head on him. To us, and any adult that visits, he’ll offer a “lucky dip” from a mystery box or a bag. He says “Would you like a lucky dip?”. To which, you reply “yes”. And he says “You have to give me money”.

I just can’t stop myself. I’ve paid up to $2, because that was the only coin I had at the time. 20c to see if he would refuse (he didn’t). And 50c this morning.

I pull out a piece of junk that I put on a shelf or kitchen bench and forget about. He comes along a day or 2 later, swoops it up and puts it back in his luck dip bag.

He made the same offer to his little brother (2yo) who could only afford to pay with a small elephant. Logan accepted and Nathan scored a yellow bracelet in exchange. Logan then added the elephant to his mystery bag.

I offered Logan similar non-cash items but Logan told me “No daddy, you have to pay me money”.

He is demonstrating sales principles that have taken me 40 years to learn: Scarcity, Intrigue, Bait-and-Switch, Gaming Theory, Value-Based-Pricing, Pricing-Based-On-Capacity-To-Pay, Establishing-Desire-Before-Making-An-Offer.

I’m amazed.

And proud.

And running out of coins.

This one time our middle son Logan was just about to start school. We were teaching him to identify the sounds that letters make.

My question way: “Logan, what sound does ‘duck’ start with?”

Logan (5yo): “Quack?”

*hysterical laughter*

Connor (7yo) “Dad, help me make a website!”
Me: “Sure! What will it be about?”
Connor: “About how to make fires! Rubbing 2 sticks together and stuff”
Me: “Ok…”
Connor: “I want to burn the house down and make a video”
Me: “Oh dear.”

This one time I’m talking to my 8 year old son about printing money and how the Zimbabwe government printed so much that trillions of dollars could only buy a bread roll.

I showed him the 100 trillion dollar note and Connor says “Why is their queen a pile of rocks?”

This one time my wife and I and our 3 young boys were bored at home on a Saturday. We spotted an opportunity in the local community newspaper – a cat show!

We all love our Burmease cat “Muffin” so we said to the boys, “let’s go to a cat show guys!” It was a 45 minute drive from home.

We got to the community hall in the small town and it was full of people and about 100 cats in small cages being judged.

After about 30 minutes of walking slowly from cage to cage looking at these mildly interesting breeds, our eldest son comes up to us and asks “so when does the show start?”.

“What do you mean?” We said, “it already has, we’re here”.

“No, I mean the cat show, you know, the one on the stage” he said as he pointed to the back of the hall where there was a small stage with the curtain drawn and a small cardboard boxes stacked on it.

“Oh…” realisation dawned on us.  “Sorry son, there are no performing cats here, no acrobatics, or cats riding dogs, or swinging through the air, or performing stunts. A cat show, is just people with unusual cats showing them to judges in the hope they get a prize”

He looked stunned. And disappointed. “I want to go home” he said sadly. So we did.

This one time I was driving towards town in a 70kph zone one sunny morning. I was just rounding a gradual right hand bend when a beat-up red car coming from the other direction crossed over the centre line. It smashed into the rear right hand side door of a small grey/blue car travelling in my lane, which was ahead of me by about 30m at the time. Bits of glass from the lights and a part of the bumper of the red car fell off and scattered across the road.

The grey/blue car came to a stop in the middle of the lane, as did I, but the collision barely slowed the red car down, in fact, it crossed back to it’s side of the road and sped off!

I couldn’t believe it! The driver didn’t even stop to check if the other driver was ok!

Because the collision wasn’t too severe (a head on would have been quite bad) I decided to abandon the victim too. I wasn’t going to let this guy get away with a hit and run so I spun the car around and went after him.

He turned off several times into side streets trying to shake me. But his car was a piece of junk and one wheel was jambed up against a crumpled wheel well so it certainly wasn’t a high speed pursuit. I was beeping my horn and flashing my lights to let him know I wasn’t going anywhere. We ended up in a very quiet suburb when he finally pulled over.

I didn’t have a cellphone on me so I suddenly felt very alone.

I got out, as did he, and we talked. He told me he’d been at a party all night, had been drinking heavily and had only had a few hours sleep before deciding to drive home this morning. He had fallen asleep at the wheel when he had hit the other car. And one point he said “if it wasn’t for you, I’d be long gone by now”. Which worried me.

And I told him that his only option was to go and hand himself in to the police station near by and I wasn’t leaving until I witnessed him do exactly that. I assured him that the police would go easy on him because he had taken responsibility for his actions.

After about an hour of talking (including some very long silences), he finally agreed. We got into our cars, and as bits of tire and more bumper fell off his car, we drove another 4km to the nearest police station. He parked outside it and I parked further away and watched him go inside before I drove straight home.

When I got home I looked up the phone number for that police station and called. I asked “Did ‘John Smith’ just hand himself in?” After a short pause the officer said “yes” and I immediately hung up, satisfied.

And that’s the end of the story. The police didn’t trace my phone call and give me an award, the guy didn’t hunt me down and beat me up, and I didn’t try and find out what happened to him.

I’ll do the same thing all over again if I get the chance, because it’s the right thing to do.