Apparently, my college-age neighbor isn’t interested in any maternal intervention from me
Having grown up in a big, old house full of people and activity, I seem to have inherited the extreme party-throwing gene from my mother. My brother got it, too. My idea of a quiet evening at home optimally includes extra people eating, drinking or just hanging out with us. (Jon and I have that in common, thank goodness) I like to have folks just drop by, and have a glass of wine or a meal with us, and while I am not at all domestically inclined (terrible cook, not crafty, etc), I do take a lot of pleasure in composing a home that is the kind of place where people feel welcome and want to come hang out. All kinds of people. And I think my kids learn as much from lively debate from smart people around our dining room table or fireplace than they do just about anywhere else.
This summer, we’ve had a lovely run of impromptu house parties in the evenings. We turn on the twinkly lights strung up on our big front porch and VOILA! Instant party. Various neighbors and friends and family and extra children seem to appear, as if we had turned on a neon “OPEN” sign. It’s been fantastic. Low fuss and planning, great fun. These events have lately included guitar or mandolin playing, political debate (health care reform in particular), bowls of fresh figs from our tree, and produce from other people’s yards.
On Friday night, we had just such a spontaneous gathering, and a particularly entertaining one, with our neighbors K and E, A, Dr. Neighbor, T and J (and by the way, y’all need to go check out J’s gorgeous, just-launched handbag collection, which is already getting great press and national showroom placements), and a few others I may be forgetting. Plus, all of the assorted, adorable offspring of visiting adults were also in attendance.. The evening finally ended at 3:30 am. (3:30 am!!!!) when Jon and I hit the sack after the last visitor left for the night (obviously C had gone to sleep many hours earlier, and the big kids are at their Dad’s house this week. Some of our friends’ children had gone to sleep much earlier on our living room couch while watching a movie, allowing their parents to continue socializing on our porch with the childless folks who could stay as long as they liked without worrying about anyone’s bedtime.)
Along with the fantastic many-directional conversation taking place, and the adorable children running around, this particular edition of “Flash Porch Party at Casa HickJu” also included some oddball twists that made the evening perhaps the most memorable of this season. The first came sometime just after midnight. All children were either gone or asleep by this time, so it was just us grown-ups chatting on the veranda. I was trying to convince my next door neighbor that we should fence both our back yards into one single, large backyard, thus creating a mini-urban farm, where we would have chickens and maybe two miniature goats.
I was having absolutely no luck convincing her of the sheer genius of this plan when rather suddenly, two of our newer neighborhood residents – a guy and a girl – appeared at our front doorstep. These folks don’t live on our actual street but nearby, and I’d stopped by their house earlier to welcome them to the neighborhood. I knew their house was a rental, but wasn’t sure who had moved in. It turns out that they are several college/grad school students, and two of them had come to our house to say hello when they saw the people and activity on our porch. The two of them were very polite and friendly, and they and I chatted for a few minutes about what they were studying, and whether they liked their new house. I introduced them to some of their other neighbors and they were quite charming with everyone. After a brief conversation, however, it became clear to me that the girl was actually really drunk, something that hadn’t been apparent at first. She had seemed coherent and just fine when she arrived, but over a very brief span of time, she began slurring her words. She asked to use our bathroom, so I took her inside, but then she didn’t come out of the loo for a looooong time, during which period her housemate – who seemed completely sober – explained to me that he was really worried about her, and that she has a serious drinking problem. He told me that the problem is so bad that she has actually been taken to the ER two times in the past year by concerned friends.
This was Not Good.
My overdeveloped, nurturing mom antennae immediately went up when I heard about this sweet young girl’s drinking “issues,” and I asked her friend why her parents weren’t involved in getting her some help. The housemate explained that the girl’s parents pay absolutely no attention to her, and don’t seem at all concerned or even interested in this issue, even though all of the girl’s friends are terrified that she’s going to die if she keeps drinking, and so they all take turns sort of “babysitting” her at times or events where they believe she might drink. Basically, he described a situation of “designated friends” trying their best to prevent their 22 year old housemate from pulling a Janis Joplin.
At this point, I was very worried that this poor, motherless, sick young woman had maybe passed out in our bathroom, so I just went in there without asking to check on her. She was sitting on the floor, weeping. I asked her when she had last eaten (she was very tiny) and she couldn’t remember, so I fixed her a plate of cheese and crackers (protein!) and a glass of orange juice. She ate like she was really hungry, and then I took her arm and led her out to the porch where everyone else was (they all had no idea what had been going on with this inside, or even that this girl who had showed up less than an hour earlier was that inebriated.). I figured I would see what Jon thought we should do, and then proceed from there. But as soon as we got to the porch, she passed out cold. One minute she was sitting on the porch step, and the next, she was just…out – flat on her back and surrounded by concerned guests at my house.
At this point, I was very, very worried, and so I again asked her housemate about how I could contact her parents. He told me he had no idea. My friend K took her pulse and listened to her breathing and said she seemed fine, just asleep. We debated calling an ambulance, but decided that wasn’t the right course of action. Finally, I announced that we needed to just take her upstairs to our guestbed, and tuck her in. I didn’t want to send her back to her house in that condition, and besides, she couldn’t walk. I didn’t know how to contact her family, and I didn’t want her to get arrested or something, plus I felt that she needed some mothering. My mothering instinct was in overdrive, and I wanted to try to take care of her, and maybe talk to her in the morning about getting some help. I also imagined how I would feel if – God forbid – my own college-age child ended up passed out on a stranger’s porch; I would want a fellow mom to do what we mamas do and just take care of him or her in my absence. Maybe it was the wrong way to handle it, but at the moment it seemed like the best of bad options.(I welcome your thoughts on how you would have handled this one)
So I asked Jon and another male guest to carry her upstairs, which they did, trailed by me and her housemate. I got her all tucked in, and she didn’t wake up. Her housemate seemed very relieved that he wasn’t going to have to drag her back to his house in that condition, and he announced that he was now going to leave, but before he did, he wrote down his phone number for me, and gave me a piece of information to which I probably should have paid more attention, saying, “She never throws up when she gets like this. She just pees on herself.” Then he left, and we all went back downstairs to rejoin the rest of the party. Every 30 minutes or so until I went to bed myself at 3:30 am, I went up to check on her, and she seemed to be comfortably sleeping. I figured I’d talk to her in the morning and see if I could interest her in getting some help.
Almost as soon as I was resettled on the front porch with Jon and our guests after getting inebreiated neighbor settled herself – at maybe about 1:30 am - a mle stranger appeared at our front gate. It wasn’t anyone we recognized, and it was very late, so two of my male guests walked up to meet him there before he could come into our yard, to tell him that he needed to leave. We assumed he was a late night, transient panhandler, but he wasn’t. It turned out he was a lovelorn, very cleancut, preppy fellow who was stranded on our street. He asked if any of us planned to drive to the suburbs, where he lives, but none of us did, so I offered to call him a cab, which I did. For the next 30 minutes, until his ride arrived, this guy, Jamie. sat with all of us on the porch, practically weeping into the drink we gave him, and telling us his tale of woe, which was equal parts hilarious, bizarre and really pathetic.
The reason he was stranded 20 miles from home in a strange neighborhood in the middle of the night was that he had decided to “surprise” a girl with whom he is madly in love – a law student who lives in a house one block away – by appearing at her doorstep uninvited with what he repeatedly described very specifically as, “a $429 Kate Spade bag!” He had bought her the bag on his trip to NYC, from which he had only returned that day. He called her repeatedly all afternoon and evening to ask if he could bring her this extravagant gift, but she never answered, so sometime after midnight, he got the bright idea to have a friend drive him and the bag to her house, and drop him off. He figured that without any means of transportation to get home, and bearing this wonderful Kate Spade bag, she would immediately declare her love for him and invite him to spend the night. It sounded like a sure bet.
Unfortunately, it didn’t play out as he had hoped. When he arrived, he found the object of his affection flagrante delicto with another guy, a fellow law student. Horrified and stunned, he dropped the bag on her porch and took off down the street like a wounded puppy, unsure where exactly he was headed, or how he would get home. And then he saw us, sitting on the porch with the twinkly lights. We looked friendly, so he decided to stop and ask if maybe one of us might be headed in the direction of his apartment across town at some point.
As he told his story, the men all commiserated with his heartbreak, telling him that he could certainly do so much better, and that he should just write off this unappreciative law student and her obviously low morals as unworthy of his affection. But the female contingent – mostly me and my friend J the handbag designer – were more focused on the truly important things.
“Let us go back and get that $429 Kate Spade bag off her porch for you!”
He kept saying that he never wanted to see the bag again, that the very sight of it would cause him too much pain. J and I attempted to assure him that it would cause neither of us ANY pain to go get the abandoned Kate Spade bag, but he was too focused on his thwarted, borderline stalkerish plan ro hear us. And soon enough, his cab arrived, and off he went.
The next morning, I woke up to a text from Jamie, the Kate Spade bag guy, thanking me for our hospitality. This was gratifying, so I next headed upstairs to indulge my fantasy that anything I’d said the night before had had any impact whatsoever on the hispter neighbor girl asleep in our guest bed. I imagined I would awaken her, offer to take her out to IHOP and once there, over pancakes,we would connect in such a meaningful way that I could convince her to go to rehab that very day. I felt quite self satisfied as I walked up our stairs toward our guest bedroom, imagining how the neighbor girl would one day consider me her surrogate mom, perhaps naming her firstborn child after me.
Alas, she was gone. She had apparently made her Walk of Shame before sunrise.
But she didn’t leave my guest bedroom before thoroughly and, ummm….. aromatically drenching all the bedding, including the pillows (still not clear how she pulled THAT off). Apparently,s she wasn’t interested in having me as a surrogate mom, or in any pancakes or rehab I had to offer.. In fact, several days – and numerous launderings of blankets, sheets and pillows later – we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her.
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First off, I completely want to live in your neighborhood. Second off, did you get the bag!?!?!? Is it evil that I totally hoe you say yes? Great post
Just a few blocks away and the only people who show up late at night on my porch are people I don’t want there, like the drunken woman who apparently thought it would be a good place to rest, and then left her purse (NOT a Kate Spade!) on the porch and various belongings (including cash) strewn all over the yard. Or the woman running from her abusive boyfriend. Or the deaf man who claimed he needed $2 (at 2 a.m.) to buy gas to go visit his daughter in Kentucky who had just given birth. Location, location, location!
You did a nice thing, taking that girl in for the night. Most people would not have done that. Maybe at least your kindness will have made some impression.
The Kate Spade story is hi-larious. I cannot believe that the drunk girl’s friend just left her out your house in her condition. Not much of a friend. I predict she’ll avoid your house now out of embarrassment.
I know you meant well, but you should have taken the girl to the hospital. You had no way of knowing how much alcohol she’d consumed… it could have been a fatal amount. How would you have felt if you’d walked in to find a dead girl in your guest bed in the morning?
Was your doctor neighbor still around when she showed up? Did he condone the tuck-in treatment? Would he have been willing to risk his medical license on this?
I know you didn’t mean them to be, but your actions were enabling… Instead of having to face the consequence of medical intervention, she simply went home, probably in denial that she has a problem at all.
(I have had several alcoholic friends, and trust me, they need doctors to tell them, over and over again, that they need treatment)
The Kate Spade bag should be your cosmic reward for the good deeds, totally should have gone to rescue it from the undeserving wench!
Your story reminds me of the young woman who hadn’t eaten ( a constant theme here) and had a few extra glasses of white wine and wound up on the sidewalk of Second Avenue flat and unable to stand. Pulled up to a sitting position by one bystander, a galpal and I join the “rescue party.” It gets dicier but really the answer is call the police, get her to hospital. A passed out person in your home is pretty much in the same situation. Even with good vitals, you don’t know if she took medications. If her heart stopped you would have had a pretty constant guest. Good thing, she was able to walk away and leave unkind reminders. Worst would have been if she stayed permanently. Love your hearts though, bag or no bag. Christmas lights do mean happiness.
I can definitely see the case for how I should have called an ambulance. We came close, but I was just trying to balance all kinds of factors, and be compassionate and nurturing. I really thought that maybe she needed some mothering, and that she would maybe wake up and let me talk her into going for help that very day. And yes, I know that sounds naive, but it seemed like the best idea at that moment. In hindsight, not so much. Live and learn, right? And one of the things I’ve learned is that I need to make sure we always keep a waterproof mattress pad on the guest bed…
There was a Fellini movie taking place on your porch.
I was thinking your house was going to be robbed!
You lucked out, pee in the bed is better than your belongings getting robbed.
You’re a nice person and have a generous heart. It’s definitely not a character flaw.
I’m not nice, I would have let her friends deal with her and I would have volunteer to call 911 for them.
Leslie! Surely you’re not complaining that strangers have left cash strewn all over your yard! Get a grip, girl. Pick it up!
I have to say I’m pretty hard-hearted about stuff like this. I’m like dewi – I’d have either let the girl’s companion get her home, or (if he thought he couldn’t handle it) call 911. Maybe this is from living in intown Atlanta for almost 8 years. (What? Your 8-year-old was run over by a police car chasing some drug dealers, and you need help paying for the funeral? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! Get. Lost.)
Sorry to say, I had never heard of a Kate Spade bag. After looking it up online, I’m unimpressed except for the fact that if somebody leaves one on my porch, it’s ebay time!
@Clisby – I think that if J and I had managed to convince Kate-Spade-bag-guy to tell us where this girl’s house was, and we had actually gone over there and grabbed the abandoned bag off her porch, where he had dropped it, we definitely would have Ebayed it, and split the proceeds
After all, J designs far cooler, more gorgeous bags of all types herself: http://www.julieapple.com
And we certainly do get some (a lot less than we did two years go, but not sure why that is) of the situations where the guy shows up at 11 pm at night and knocks on our door and tells us he needs exactly $11.22 to buy baby formula for his infant, who is locked in a broken down car down the street, oh and by the way, he will also need money for the locksmith to come and get the baby out of the car, and maybe also a little cash for a cab for himself and the baby to get home, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH… But this just felt different. I knew she wasn’t faking or lying about being in dire straits; I could see that she really was. So I did the mom-thing, which I can certainly see might be counterproductive in somwe ways, and might not have even been the safest thing for her (that would have been ambulance, I guess). Hindsight is 20-20, I guess. At least I now know that the laws of physics don’t always apply to these situations, meaning that I never would have thought it possible for someone weighing 98 lbs sopping wet to produce that volume of liquid. She must have had it coming out of her ears to get my bedding into that condition. Go figure.
if we move to Knoxville we are soooooooo gunna live in your ‘hood.
Dang. When’s your next party?
You and yours take that old ad slogan, “we’ll leave a light on for ya.”, to a whole new level…a 4th and Gill level.
Great stories and learning lessons for all.
BH
I’m sure she would have fled anyway having soaked your sheets, but it is quite possible that the drunken woman woke up with absolutely no memory of the night before and no idea where she was. I’m sure she would have responded to your mothering if she knew where she was and who you were:).
I think your heart was in the right place.
However, here are the 2 reasons I would have called an ambulance.
1. As other posters said, you really don’t know how serious her condition was, and frankly, she oculd have died or gone into a coma in your guest bed. Scary, but true.
2. When mom and dad get the bill for the ambulance, for the umpteenth time, maybe they will wake up and do something about their daughter’s condition. If indeed, the story about the parent’s ‘not paying any attention to her’ is true, and that they would get the bill. That might just be a story she tells her friends, and she’s successfully hiding this from her parents. You never know about people who are that messed up.
Drunk girl would have spent the night in our house too and we probably would have driven heartbroken young man home. You come by it honestly.
i’ve been looking at the $429 Kate Spade bags online just now, and honestly i don’t think it’d have been worth it for us to try and sneak it off the porch under her nose.
i wonder how she felt the next morning, though, when she found it!
About the college girl situation: You know, big hospital bills can be a huge deal for a college-aged kid. and… even though i know for sure it’d be worth it for her to live, the signs of alcohol poisoning just weren’t there.
If you HAD taken her to the hospital, you can be sure she would never come back to see you again. This way at least she knows that you are genuinely concerned about her well-being.. and not just interested in getting her off your porch. Just sayin.
Man, this is truly a 4th and Gillian night. Reminds me of many front porch parties of my own there. The random strangers always make for a good story…always. Sometimes, they even become good friends.
Oh, I think you were right to want to help her. I’m just imagining how terrible it would be if she never woke up. And I didn’t mean to compare her situation with the obvious panhandlers – only that years of that have made me much less willing to help a stranger in a personal way. (Cab or ambulance? Yes. Bring them into my house? No.)
Katie, it was very kind of you to take care of the drunk girl, but anytime you are hosting a passed-out guest, I caution to keep an ever closer eye on that guest. You did not know if she had chewed an opiate earlier in the evening. Doing so causes the organs to shut down & death occurs very quickly. Many people think they are helping a drunk “sleep it off”, but the drunk could have dangerous chemicals in her system. You and your homeowner’s insurance could be sued for negligence.
You are very trusting in a way that I, having grown up in NYC, could never be. I would never let a strange young woman stay in my house, drunk or not. Especially when my young child was also in the house. You did not know anything about this girl but what her friend told you. And I would have been totally pissed (pun intended) and horrified if she urinated in my guest bed. Kiddie pee is one thing, but drunk adult pee is another. And the possibilty of death that others pointed out is also a factor. As well-intentioned as you were, it could have had legal ramifications. I also agree on the enabling thing too. I’ve known many people with substance abuse problems and mothering is not usually what they need. Remember, you know what she told her friends about her mother, which might not be true. Even if it is true, I have learned that if a person has mother issues, “surrogate mothering” may not always help. They are looking for acknowledgement from a specific person and getting it elsewhere might not change that kind of longing.
As for the love-lorn guy, I would have been hard pressed to believe him too, but like I said, I’m a cynical New Yorker. I’m not leaving that much money on anyone’s porch!
All that being said, I really do think you are a sweet, big-hearted person and that is good karma.
Great story!
hehehehe – it sort of sounds like BB.
great post! love it!