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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thormagni" data-source="post: 3519532" data-attributes="member: 13637">Well, I've had an unusual situation tonight and I just wanted to bounce it off you guys to get your opinion on what I should have done differently.It was just about 10 p.m., we had just put out son to bed, and I was getting ready to follow, when there was a knock on the front door. A young woman wearing flip-flops, leading a little boy (maybe 3 or 4 years old) was at the front door. I had never seen either of them before. She and her son looked bedraggled, she said something about a broken down car, she was clearly at her wits end, and wanted to use the telephone.After overhearing almost an hour of phone calls, shouting and crying, I gathered that she and her boyfriend have had an argument. He took her money and her cell phone and now she is stuck in Columbus. Apparently she lives in North Vernon.While she was outside talking on my cell phone, Alex and I were left entertaining the little boy in the house. He is hungry and tired, he tells us. But he is also a Spider-Man fan and as most of you know, my home computer case is a Spider-Man case with a big glowing Web on the side. We talked about Spidey, I showed him my collection of Spidey pictures on the computer and gave him the Spider-Man action figure that sits above my monitor.Time went by and eventually she was ready to start walking the streets of Columbus again, with nowhere to go, no way to get there and no one to call, apparently. I called the dispatch center, they sent a couple of very nice officers over but she had already headed off again. I pointed them in the general direction she left, and said she was heading for California Street.Byt I just looked over in the corner and the little guy left the Spider-Man figure I gave him. I figured if anyone needed a Spider-Man to keep him company, this little guy did. Especially tonight.And then, even as I was starting to write this, I heard another knock on the door. A few weeks ago, Bud Herron wrote several very moving columns about a panhandler here in Columbus. At the time those stories ran, I found out that she lives across the street from me. Just now, at 11:10 p.m., she knocked on the door of our house and wanted to use my phone. I told her "no" and sent her on her way.I can't help but feel that in both of these cases there was something more I should have done. But I don't know what. Should I have driven the mom and boy to North Vernon? Even knowing that the panhandler has lied to me at least three times before trying to get money from me, should I have let her use my phone? Is there some bigger step I could have taken that would have helped both of them in a more meaningful way?I just feel that my response was lacking and I wanted to see what everyone else thought.</blockquote>

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