When my husband came home from work the other day, I dropped everything I was doing to run to the door and greet him with a long lingering hug as soon as he stepped foot out of the car. Call me a drama queen if you’d like, but I actually had tears welling up my eyes and I felt lucky he was alive.
No, he wasn't recently in any car accident nor did he go through any near death experiences of any kind. He just went to work, went to meetings with clients, replied a few dozen emails or so and at the end of the day, drove home – all the normal routine (and perhaps rather mundane) things.
What wasn't normal was the fact that someone called our house telling our poor housekeeper that he had been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition at the nearest hospital. In tears and completely terrified, our housekeeper called my mother-in-law, who then called and told me.
Sure, I had heard of similar scams happening around our circle of friends. They call, they say our loved one is dying then they make a second call asking for money. So logically I was convinced it was a scam almost immediately. Somehow though, in the back of my head, I kept thinking "What if it's true?" Matters became worse when I kept getting my husband's voicemail at every attempt of calling his cell phone.
Figuring the only way to find out was to see for myself, I left the office, rushed to take a cab to the hospital, and was there in less than ten minutes. I soon found out that my initial instinct was correct - it was just a scam. And no, the con artist did not ask for money - which made the scam seem rather odd and pointless. But anyway...
On my way out of the hospital -where the nurses there told me this sort of thing happened all the time - I finally managed to get through to my husband. Although I knew it was a scam, I still felt unbelievably relieved that he was unharmed, unscathed, and even smirking at me in response to my so-called overreaction. I couldn't stop the inner drama queen in me, I bawled my eyes out as soon as I heard him say "hello".
People generally say that everything happens for a reason. So perhaps this odd incident happened to wake me up and tell me that I haven't been appreciating my husband enough? Was it a cosmic attempt to remind me not to take him for granted? And perhaps for me to subsequently tell others about it so they could learn the same lesson I did?
Whatever the reason, I find myself now strangely thanking the person who tried to scam us. Not deeply thanking him of course, because well, who am I kidding, at the end of the day he still gave me an anxiety attack and I'm not a saint so it’s not that easy for me to entirely forgive and forget. But beyond that, I did learn something out of the whole fiasco.
Sometimes it takes a bit of drama in life to wake you up, and while I used to be more of a "the glass is half empty" kind of person, I can now tell myself that even though it's half empty, but at least it's not entirely empty. There is still half a glass worth drinking.
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