My phone rang early one morning last week. With five of us living in my apartment it’s rare the phone rings more than once.

But that morning the phone rang long enough to rouse me from sleep. I hung a foot-and-a-half from the ceiling, madly swiping in the darkness below to try and grab the ringing devil without actually crawling out from under the sheet, the cotton blanket, the wool blanket, the down blanket and the comforter.

Somehow I managed to answer the phone. Hello?

A voice from I don’t know where and I don’t know whom, came across the line. Hello? Is this the crisis hotline?

Before I had time to think, I heard myself say, No, I’m really sorry, you have the wrong number. By the time I did start to think, I couldn’t believe what I had heard or even said. Oh … can I talk to you?

I don’t know exactly how to explain the voice I heard during those early morning hours, but it pulled at me. The voice pleaded with a disappointed, uncertain, almost lingering hope.

Yes. Of course, I said yes.

On instinct I reached out to the voice coming through the wire. We talked for a few minutes and then, mid-sentence, the voice was no longer there … something disconnected the line.

I tried to find the voice again, but there was only silence … and then, dial tone. I hung up the phone.

I crawled back into bed and huddled down underneath the layers of blankets and closed my eyes, trying to go back to sleep. I wanted to go back to sleep and wake up to find it was all just a dream. But I couldn’t.

It could have been a prank. My neighbors do have reason to even a score … or two. The call could have been a prank for revenge, a tasteless prank. I thought about that. Ha ha.

It could have been real. The call could have been from someone who reallly needed something. The voice could have been a person asking for help. I’m still thinking about that.

It’s scary to be alone, but even scarier to feel alone. No one should have to feel like that.

When I feel down and life starts to slip away from my grasp, I read a poem by Robert Fulghum that was given to me by a friend to put the world back into perspective.

Most of what I really know about how to live, and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and play and work some every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down, and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup—they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you ever learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk at 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and to stick together.

I hope the voice that came through the wire knows that. I’m sure someone will hold his hand.