Wrong Event

Half of crisis work is figuring out what's actually happening.

I worked crisis in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest. What was actually happening was rarely what anybody expected, including me.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Theo was always dressed for the wrong event. A Hawaiian shirt and sandals to court. A three-piece suit and a pocket square to ask about a utility bill. Nobody ever asked Theo why. We just watched. In court, Theo behaved perfectly.

We sent Darone to Community Outreach for a food box. He found one employee trying to unload a delivery van while answering questions from a full waiting room, so Darone helped unload the van.

Three days later he was still there, helping. Before long, other clients would only go to Community Outreach on the days Darone worked. He lasted almost a year, longer than several actual employees.

He did get the food box eventually. He just couldn't remember when.

Delroy walked out on Shanice and their three kids and left no forwarding address. Years later he came back for his daughter's graduation. Sober three years and eight months, clothes that fit, a maintenance job at an apartment complex.

He didn't ask anybody to tell him he'd done right. He said he did wrong. Tallulah, one of our clients, asked whether he'd do it again.

"If everything was exactly the same? Yes."

The man we'd spent years trying to stabilize had stabilized by walking away from every person who had a right to expect him to stay.

Wrong Event is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

Included free: Jukebox, a short bonus Sagebrush City book.