Saturday, March 29, 2014

Knowledge is Power

I once prided myself on knowing how to behave.  I may not have behaved, but mother, reinforced by father, beat good manners into her sons.  Today I'm stumped, so once again I come to you hat in hand.

The following story appeared earlier in this week in our local,  the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

"Ross is alive and well after report of his death"
Former Southern Methodist University and NBA basketball player Quinton Ross had to ease the fears of friends and family members after he was erroneously reported dead.  Ross lives in the suburbs near Dallas and was attending Monday's night NIT game between Louisiana State and SMU. He said he woke to a phone loaded with messages from people concerned about his well being...."

Apparently, the New York Post published a story saying his body was found buried on a public beach in New York.
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It would never once occur to me to phone someone I thought was dead. Believing they wouldn't answer what would I say...to whom?  Is phoning the dead now common practice?

Just wondering.
Toad





3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a guilty pleasure of binge watching the newly-released vintage episodes of Law & Order. The station running the series is one with those mongrel ads, terrible ads. One of them features an attorney saying if anyone has ever had a stroke, high blood pressure, heart attack or died from taking pharmaceutical X, to call NOW and be part of a class action suit.

So, yeah, you can pick up the phone and call the dead, and apparently the dead can pick up a phone and call an attorney.

-Flo

Karen said...

I think the typical reaction would be to call a relative for confirmation but these days with immediate information, people want to go directly to the source. Then again, with social media, who knows? I would not be surprised if folks expected the deceased put out a message on Twitter or Facebook.

LLP said...

That's funny & love Flo's comment. So, an honest but less than mentally acute person -- let's call them A -- tells you they've phoned a purportedly dead-person X. Better yet, person A claims that they spoke to dead-person X and that X is extant, living... We could take any lesson(s) from this: A) sometimes we benefit from the less acute & their activities (e.g., we learn from their mistakes or "Darwin Awards"...) and so why not accept that A could be telling us the truth about X? B) Even in a world of social media and real-time reporting it is good to wait for evidence, corroboration... Of course, person X could just be the worst in their attempted insurance scam?