Our usual Sunday routine is to get up at a reasonable hour, go to the Farmer’s Market and then hang out at the Orchard Valley Cafe for a little bit and then go home.  We used to go to Starbucks, but decided to go to Orchard because I wanted to support local cafes and they have free wifi! (How’s that for a run on sentence?)

Anyway, this Sunday started like any other Sunday.  Joe, my brother, brought over a movie and stayed over night. We end up watching it and Ali G Indahouse.  Ali G is HILARIOUS! 

We did our morning routine (+ Joe and some scrabble fun at Orchard) and came home.  As I was doing a little knitting and Joe’s in the bathroom doing whatever the door bell rang.  Now, our door bell never rings unless we are expecting someone, so this Sunday so far has been pretty unusual already.

I heard Peter open the door, but since he’s out in front I just hung out in the back watching Graham Norton (Cadney and Lacy was on the show as guests.) Peter’s good at taking care of people at the door. Unless they are asking for money for a good cause, he usually send them on their way.  I thought this would be like just any other times.

Few minutes passed by, the person has not gone away Peter came to the back living room, and told me there was a lost girl (H) wanting to use the phone to call her friends. Whatever, fine with me.

Then Peter brought H. to the back living room. I was a bit annoyed, because I was watching TV and there’s yarn everywhere. I was not in the mood to greet any stranger especially a stray girl.

He said to me, she’s lost and her friends are not answering her calls. I looked at her and asked her where she was going? She said she want to visit a friend but she didn’t know her friend’s address. 

She said, one of her friends dropped her off in Campbell, but she needs to be in Cupertino.  She tried calling her other friends, but none of them are home.

So the next question (logical question I thought) I asked her was, “Do you want us to drop you at home?”.  She started to cry and said, “No, I can’t go back there.” 

I asked her, is there anything I can do for her? She thought for a little bit and said, “can you look up my friend Earl’s address in the white pages? I would like to go there.”

I did a bit of white pages magic and she said that’s my friend’s address. So we decided to drop her off at her friend’s house.  At this point,  Joe came out of the bathroom and looked a little surprised to see her. He is about to take off to the light rail station to go to the San Jose Jazz Festival.

We all got in the car, dropped Joe off at the station and proceeded to drive to the girl’s friend’s house.  She is not too chatty which is fine with me.  As we were getting closer, she got really excited. She got out of the car, we gave her our home number and told her to let us know when she gets in the apartment.  She mis understood us and said she’ll call. The whole ride, I was thinking that I should have told her not to get into stranger’s house/car ever again.  But she seem so relived to see her friend’s house I didn’t have the heart.

We went home and got 2 hung up calls. The answering machine message is wrong so we assumed that’s her calling to tell us she’s ok.

But Peter being the way he is, was worried about her. (I wonder if he would worry about me if I get lost... but I digress.)  So he was debating if he should call the number of her friend.  He called several time but no one picked up.  Finally, I told him to call again because he look so worried, and an young girl picked up and said “oh H. is ok, her mom just came to pick her up.” Huh? Did we just help someone run away from home?

Joe called about 30 minute later and asked us what happened.  He said we should have taken her to the police station.  She might have been a teenage runaway. That thought had totally crossed my mind but I didn’t want to say anything.

There are so many warning signs to this story that her story is odd that we just didn’t pick up.  I am glad everything worked out at the end. I hope H’s mom gave her a stern lecture about how not to get into stranger’s car/house.  

Peter and I chatted about this for a while after.  I asked him how come he didn’t ask her if she wanted a ride home. He said he did and she said no and was about to walk out the door.  I guess Peter has a knack for picking up strays.

There’s really no moral to this story.  Just, uh, kids don’t get into stranger’s house/car.  If you have a fight with you mom, go to your room and turn up music and slash your teddy bears but do not get dropped in a city you don’t know without money looking for Earl.