AJ's Phone Debacle

AJ has a phone again. I don't want to bore you with the entire series of mishaps and mistakes that have prevented her from having a phone for five days, but a couple are noteworthy. First, on Monday when AJ was mugged on the corner in her neighborhood, there were lots of people around. It was dark, but there were people on foot on the streets and people in cars stopped at the light on the corner. Nobody did anything when the kid robbed (and hit) her. No outward reaction whatsoever, which is exactly what happened when she saw someone hit by a car a few months ago. She met the eyes of people watching her kneel over the man lying in the street through their car windows, and when the light changed, they drove away.

I worry that people are detached and unsympathetic.

I can understand why the insurance company needs a police report, but the hoops she needed to go through ("We can't go any further until we have the officer's badge number." So I call the precinct (AJ doesn't have a phone) and the officer tells me it isn't their policy to give out badge numbers. Finally we make it over that hurdle (another representative decides they can go further without the badge number), AJ takes the subway across the city to pick the phone up and the insurance company, who had assured me that a new Sim card would be included in the box with the replacement phone, didn't include the Sim card. And they "can't do anything but send one out and she'll get it Monday". "That's totally unacceptable! Connect me to your supervisor," I say. Who decides AJ can go to a dealer, buy a card and get reimbursed.

AJ heads back out (mind you, she spent four hours at the police station a couple days before this and was directed to the wrong police station the previous day) to buy a Sim card, but when I don't hear from her all day and into the night, I begin to wonder. I call the cell phone customer service and they say her phone hasn't been activated. The store should have called the serial number of the Sim card into the company. Later AJ calls me from a friend's phone and says she got the card and they told her at the store that it would be activated in up to 48 hours. They had sold her the card and then just let her leave with it unactivated.

To make a long story short, I called the serial number in, the phone was activated in less than a half hour, I talked with AJ at 5:30 am as she was going to bed and I was waking up and there is peace in the world again. (Oh, did I remember to tell you that she got strep throat in the middle of all this and had to drag herself to the doctor?)

I want to believe in the kindness of strangers. That there are people out there who are not too self-involved to perceive the needs of others. That humans aren't too jaded to assist, aid, comfort, take time, trust. That when our kids, young and vulnerable, step out into the world, they will be protected.