An Adventurous Quick Errand

Several years ago, I walked into our house after having a busy day at the office. I was hoping that dinner would be ready, and we could sit down to a nice hot meal. When I walked in the front door, I could smell the hamburger my first wife Carol was cooking for the spaghetti she was preparing. She always made good spaghetti (I’ve been told that it isn’t too hard to make but I also knew that it was far above my ability to make). I was hungry and ready to eat and was quite disappointed that it wasn’t quite ready so my wife asked if we could run a short errand. She told me that it would only take 5-10 minutes, so I agreed. We gathered up Paul, loaded him into the car, and left on our short adventure.


Unfortunately, when we arrived at our destination, the merchandise we ordered was not quite ready, so the quick errand turned into an excursion of more than an hour. We tried being patient and understanding with the merchant, but this was hard because all of us were hungry, anxious, and impatient to get home and eat.


We finally completed our errand and headed home with our stomachs growling. As we entered our subdivision, we noticed that there was a great deal of excitement. People were running hither and thither towards some unknown destination. As we drove down the street towards our home, we carefully avoided running over anyone and a sense of curiosity overwhelmed us. We didn’t think much about all the excitement until we noticed the people were running down our street. 


When we turned onto our street we saw a fire truck, I mean a big fire truck, parked in front of our house with firefighters running around trying to ascertain what was going on. We noticed neighbors, friends, and strangers congregating all around watching the firefighters, all of them interested in them watching a fire. Normally, I would have been one of these observers but this time I panicked. 


Due to all the chaos, there was no place to park close to our house, so I just turned the car off and left it in the middle of the street, jumped out, and took off running to my house. I wished I had not been in such a hurry because at the precise moment I arrived I watched a firefighter come out the door carrying a frying pan of smoking lean hamburger. He was smiling from ear to ear, and I turned red from my toes to my face. I don’t think I have ever been so embarrassed in my life.


In reality I was grateful for the action of my backdoor neighbor who was also a firefighter and took it upon himself to save our home when he saw smoke billowing out of our kitchen window. I have often thought how fortunate we were that the outcome was not worse than losing a frying pan and a couple pounds of hamburger. It certainly could have been tragic for us. It was a great learning experience about how easily this incident could have been prevented by simply taking a moment to check on the stove and turn it off before we left on our errand.


As I share this experience, I believe that there are three simple but important lessons that could be learned from this story which could benefit us as well as our children. First, don’t be in such a rush that we miss the obvious things in life, i.e. turning off the stove. Second, we can learn to appreciate our neighbors and share our appreciation with them even if it is nothing more than a sincere thank you. Third, be mindful and appreciative of our blessings.


Needless to say, we didn’t eat spaghetti that night as we were so shook up from that experience that we went out and bought a hamburger.




Happy Failing Forward,


Calvert Cazier