MY View

There’s nothing like a phone call at 5 a.m. from a daughter to give the old heart a jolt.

In fact, most times when one of my daughters honors the old man with a phone call, something is wrong, or something is needed. On an almost nightly basis, they check in with mom, who gets the good news of the day.

At 5 a.m., dad gets the call moments after a collision with a deer.

In the last few months, I’ve arranged collision repair because of that wayward deer, filled a gas tank at 1 a.m. on the side of a freeway and took a very frantic and urgent vehicle lockout call in the wee hours.

You can understand why I panic when my phone lights up with one of their numbers.

When my oldest daughter went to college in Milwaukee, I was on a first-name basis with Eric from the service station that helped me in time of vehicle crisis when I was hundreds of miles away. We’ve worked through fender benders at rush hour and the mysterious case of a wheel actually coming off a car.

Last week it was daughters two and three who caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. One was the bad news: the deer. The other, was just to tell me there was a car on fire, and it wasn’t hers. She called when I knew she was commuting, talking into the speaker phone. “Dad, I smelled smoke in my car, and I was going to call you. Then, I drove past a car completely on fire. I thought I’d let you know it isn’t me.

Thanks for letting me know!

In the rare occurrence that they just call me out of the blue to chat, I don’t trust them. I fear some kind of bomb is going to drop. I always answer the phone the same way: “What’s wrong?” and I get my credit card handy. Two weeks ago, I had multiple conversations with our youngest as she was trying to buy a new TV. She went into the store for one model and was told the bigger version was the same price the next day. She went before work and was told it wouldn’t be on sale for a week. No real accident in this tale, but a crisis, nonetheless.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to help, as much as I am able, and I’m glad that they know they can rely on dear old dad. But that doesn’t ease my fear when the phone rings in the middle of the night.