When I was eight years old, I came to the sad realisation that I was never going to be one of those incredible kids on the news who manages to call the authorities in a time of crisis. Like those freak hero toddlers who can barely talk but somehow call an ambulance when their mum has an unexpected seizure. (And there’s always time pressure, like oil boiling on the stove that would have burned the whole house down if the kid hadn’t been so calm and brilliant and skilled with a phone.) There are even miracle dogs that have managed to alert the appropriate authorities when their owners are choking on their frozen meals for one. I was always so impressed by those feel-good, time-filler packages on the news, and assumed that if ever faced with the same kind of ‘it’s all up to you now’ scenario involving an incapacitated adult, I would handle the situation with skill and aplomb. So it was with a heavy heart that I was forced to accept I was not a freak hero toddler. I wasn’t even a miracle dog.
