There are the “nothing in my closet looks good” mornings. The “it’s freezing outside but my office is a sauna and I don’t know which climate to dress for” mornings. The “I’ve been putting off going to the laundromat for weeks and now all I have to wear to work is this free t-shirt I got at a walk-a-thon in college” mornings.
And, you know, maybe not all of us have had a “I can’t get my pants on and could use some professional assistance” morning. But in that situation, who among us wouldn’t do the same thing that 2-year-old Aaliyah from South Carolina did, and dial 911?
A wardrobe malfunction is an emergency, folks.
The call to the Greenville County emergency dispatcher’s office came on Wednesday, local TV station WHNS reported.
“Hello. Greenville County, 911″ the dispatcher said, succinctly.
“Hello?” came the almost incoherent reply.
The dispatcher repeated himself. But all he got was a toddler’s muffled babbling.
It sounded like a joke call, sheriff’s deputy Martha Lohnes told WSPA, but the dispatcher reached out to the sheriff’s department just to be sure. Lohnes was in the neighborhood nearby, so she headed to the house to investigate.
Aaliyah’s grandfather answered the door, completely bewildered. He’d had no clue that the little girl had called anyone, let alone the police.
Then, Aaliyah “comes running out to the front with half a pant leg on and she’s just like ‘Hey!'” Lohnes recalled.
The deputy has two little sisters of her own, so she understood the gravity of the situation. She sat the little girl down on the stairs and helped her get her other leg into pants. Then, because a cop’s work is never done, she helped tie Aliyah’s shoes.
As a “reward,” Lohnes said, the toddler gave her a hug.
“It was the highlight of my day and I loved it,” the deputy told WHNS.
Aaliyah’s mother Pebbles Ryan, who had been at work for the entire wardrobe emergency, was alarmed to get a text from her father saying the cops had showed up at the house.
Then she saw why.
“I just started laughing,” Ryan told WHNS.
Speaking with WSPA, Ryan said that she’d shown her daughter how to use a cellphone and told her that 911 was the number to call in an emergency.
Perhaps she could have been a little bit clearer about what exactly an “emergency” entails.
On Thursday, when Lohnes returned to the house for a TV interview, Aaliyah was sporting a new pair of jeans. These ones, she told WSPA, were a little bit easier to put on.
Aaliyah, you set an example for us all.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Sarah Kaplan
