Please Pull Over For Emergency Vehicles

Because you never know who they are going to help. Perhaps it is just a kitten stuck up a tree but maybe, just maybe it is a sweet young mother who has locked her keys and her child in the car in the fabric store parking lot. Maybe this mother realized what she had done and a wave of sheer panic went through her. Maybe at that point she accosted some nice random stranger (she looked like a grandmother) in the parking lot and asked her to stay with the car. Now of course this situation is completely hypothetical but just to make it easier, let's give this young mother a name. Let's call her Ally. Now perhaps at this point Ally ran back into the store to use the phone and I imagine a death glare may have passed from Ally to the clerk who acted annoyed about loaning out the store phone. It's possible that Ally realized that due to the age of cell phones she didn't know anybody's phone number except her very good friend who happened to be the first person she thought to call. Now Ally's friend might have been at a soccer game and unable to get Ally's extra set of keys. Ally may have had the brilliant idea to try to get her toddler to climb up to the front seat and press the button on the keypad to unlock the door however, I imagine that when Ally got back out to the parking lot, the toddler had already buckled herself into her car seat. Ally may have even tried another friend who she couldn't get on the phone. It's possible that the nice random stranger had the idea to call the fire department. Ally was probably hesitant to dial 9-1-1 for such a situation but seeing as she had exhausted her other options and her husband was out of town, she probably acquiesced but still acted helpless enough that the random stranger offered to make the call. You may have been asking yourself at this point what the toddler was doing (if this had been a real situation of course) and maybe the toddler thought the whole thing was a game and was playing patty cake and itsy-bitsy spider through the window with the random stranger. Maybe the toddler got very excited a little later and started shouting "Yeah fireman!" as the fire truck rolled down the street flashing lights and sounding sirens and all. At this point, the young mother was probably a bit embarrassed at all the pomp and circumstance over the situation but relieved when the firemen were able to successfully open the car door without any permanent damage to it. Maybe the mother had to laugh a little when the firemen asked if she'd like the toddler transported to a medical facility (since the toddler was obviously fine). Maybe the mother was thinking "actually I'd like you to get those flashing lights and sirens out of here so people stop staring at me and I can stop feeling like a moron for having had to call 9-1-1 for this." And maybe Ally was so thrown off by the whole event that she went straight home instead of to the grocery store as planned. And maybe, just maybe Abby's Ally's friends that she told have been making fun of her ever since. Of course, like I mentioned before, this is all hypothetical. Purely a fable to remind you of the importance of pulling over for those flashing lights. It could be you next time. Or it could be Ally again. Either way, pull over would ya?