Six Sentence Story: Reservations

She heard the little girl crying in fear, and that's what got to her; although the grown-ups standing there screaming at each other was almost bad enough by itself, it was the crying that made her throw her reservations to the wind and step out to do something about the situation in spite of the danger.

She headed out and let them have it verbally, "Look at you two, your mothers would be ashamed of you, behaving this way, screaming at each other in public instead of talking things out calmly, and you are making your little girl cry, right at Christmas time!"

The shock of her outburst stopped them both cold and as they began to mutter apologies she turned to the little girl and asked, "Sweetheart, would you like to come in my apartment and have a snack while your mother and father talk about their issue calmly and solve it like adults?" and she led the child into her home to dry the tears and let her have some Christmas cookies with her own three children.

Many things changed after that incident; she had gained the respect of all the neighbors in that apartment complex, who never again let her get all of the way to the dumpster with her garbage or all of the way back from her car to her apartment with a grocery bag before one of them would grab whatever she was carrying and say, "Let me get that for you!"

Several months later, the father very quietly alluded to the incident by telling her, "I want you to know we're both still trying to behave, and not yell, we just talk, and things are getting better!"

Smiling, she told him "Good for you!" and thought to herself that it was amazing she had taken such a chance and instead of them turning on her and harming her, which in that rough neighborhood could have happened, they had taken her words to heart and were changing their marriage.

(Note:  this is based on a true story told to me by DiDreaming.)

Linking up with Uncharted Blog and Six Sentence Stories.

Today is:

Accession Day -- United Arab Emirates (accession of H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan)

Best Elf Awards -- Fairy Calendar

Edmonton Folk Music Festival -- Gallagher Park, Edmonton, AB, Canada (folk music of all kinds and fun for the whole family; through Sunday)

Feast of Everything Green Except Money -- Hooray for veggies! You'll need them before you have that root beer float.

Festival at Sandpoint -- Lake Pend Oreille, Sandpoint, ID, US (internationally renowned summer concert series in a casual and relaxed atmosphere; through the 16th)

Festival of Nut and Ra; Chief Festival of Thoth -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Hiroshima Day

Hope Watermelon Festival -- Hope, AK, US (if you've never had Hope watermelons, you've missed the best!  Through Saturday)

Independence Day / National Day -- Bolivia; Jamaica

"Li'l" Margaret's Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival -- Leonardtown, MD, US (bluegrass music, crafts, old time tractors and cars, and home-cooked meals; bring a lawn chair!  through Saturday)

Mountain Dance and Folk Festival -- Asheville, NC, US (celebrating the cultural heritage of the southern Appalachian Mountains; through Saturday)

National Fresh Breath (Halitosis) Day -- shouldn't that be labeled anti-halitosis?

National Root Beer Float Day -- A&W Root Beer really gets into this day http://awrestaurants.com/rootbeerfloatday

Peace Festival -- Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Japan

Ribfest -- Kalamazoo, MI, US (live festival and cook off; through Saturday)

Sts. Justus and Pastor's Day (Patrons of Alcala, Spain; Madrid, Spain)

Tanabata Festival -- Sendai, Japan (Japan's largest Tanabata 'Star Festival', through the 8th)

Teinne Festival -- Ancient Celtic Calendar (Teinne, the Celtic Holy Fire, sometimes called Tan; date approximate)

Transfiguration of the Lord -- Orthodox Christian

Turku Music Festival -- Turku, Finland (music from medieval to modern, by world-famous artists in the historic venues of Finland's oldest city, in historic buildings all over the city; through the 15th)

Wiggle Your Toes Day -- internet generated, and my suggestion is to celebrate it with a cool drink out by the pool!


Birthdays Today:

Romola Garai, 1982
Melissa George, 1976
Soleil Moon Frye, 1976
M. Night Shyamalan, 1970
Michelle Yeoh, 1962
Catherine Hicks, 1951
Dorian Harewood, 1950
Shirley Ann Jackson, 1946
Peter Bonerz, 1938
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, 1934
Andy Warhol, 1928
Robert Mitchum, 1817
Lucille Ball, 1911
Clara Bow, 1905
Hoot Gibson, 1892
Alexander Fleming, 1881
Louella Parsons, 1881
Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, 1861
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809 
Daniel O'Connell, 1775


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Help"(Album debut), 1965


Today in History:

Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founds the city of Bogota, Colombia, 1538
Holland (The Dutch Republic) sells Brazil to Portugal and the two 
countries sign the Treaty of The Hague, 1661
The first private military school in the US, Norwich University, is 
founded in Vermont, 1819
The Russian Geographical Society is founded in Saint Petersburg, 1845
William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by the electric chair, 1890
Alice Ramsey takes three friends (none of whom could drive) to become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, 1909
Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, 1926
Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down by the US National Forest Service, for reasons even they cannot explain, 1964
The Federal Voting Rights Act is signed, 1965
A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, 1986
The United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, 1990
NASA makes the still disputed announcement that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms, 1996
The incoming coalition government of the United Kingdom discontinues the use of the controversial ContactPoint database of all children in that country, 2010
After a century of silence, Mount Tongariro in New Zealand erupts, spreading volcanic ash across the country's central North Island and affecting airports, 2012
The Curiosity Rover, controlled by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, lands safely on the surface of Mars, 2012