How a good number of calls to the ER start

This morning, a young woman who volunteered with my agency a couple of years ago stopped by my office to chat.

She related that she'd had an annoying event happen over the weekend. She is a separated mother of a pre-school aged boy. She shares a household with her divorced mother. Both she and her mother have jobs.

She started the tale by commenting about role reversal with her mother. She said that her mother had recently broken up with a boyfriend and was unhappy. Her mother's friends convinced her to go out to a night club with them as a distraction. My friend said that she fell asleep on the couch waiting for her mother to come home. She was awakened at 4 am when her mother came in, followed by a guy my friend had never seen before.

She said after a short time, the guy left her mother's bedroom. But, he sat in his vehicle for at least half an hour without driving off. This bothered my friend. Finally, the guy came back to the door and asked if he and his buddy could come inside and sleep. They said they were too drunk and cold to drive home or stay outside. My friend's mother agreed, and my friend found herself giving up the couch to the buddy who had stayed in the vehicle while her mother and her new friend were, um, hooking up.

She said that the guy on the couch tried to convince her to join him "to keep him warm."

She said she went to the bedroom she shares with her child and moved the dresser in front of the door.

The next morning her mother told her that as she and her friends were leaving the club, the guy she'd hooked up with called to her in the parking lot. And the line that got him into her pants? "I think you're pretty." She said she didn't really want to bring him home/have sex with him, but her friends said it would help her get over the ex-boyfriend.

This is a woman in her mid 40s. She is still letting her friends make her decisions. She has no more confidence in herself that a line like "you're pretty" is enough for her to over come her own pride and have sex with a near stranger. And, she exposed her child and grandchild a very real risk of harm.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. But, it was easily avoidable. I'm not saying the mother would have been to blame if one or both of these guys had criminal behavior on their minds . . . . but it seems to me that somewhere along the line smarter decisions were easy to make. If nothing else, your children or roommates deserve more respect than this story indicates.