“What is that thing?” said my young friend Henry as we relaxed over the television in his family’s den.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
“It’s the Tardis,” I said. “Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It’s how Doctor Who gets around.”
Henry shot at me a gaze the fully withering nature of whose quotient only a 13-year-old can achieve.
“Have you met my Dad?” he inquired coldly.
I smoothed the Time Lord throw blanket over my knees, settled the David Tennant pillow behind my head and tucked Tom Baker under my right elbow.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “But what is it anyway? Not the Tardis itself, that weird blue box it comes in. Dad says it’s a police box, but I don’t know what that means.”
“Oh, that,” I said. Now, here was somewhere I could help. I retrieved the William Hartnell action figure from the floor and tenderly stroked his dear old snowy mane.
“It was a special kind of telephone booth,” I said, “that we used to have in England, with a line that went directly to the police station. Back when I was growing up there, that was how we called the police.”
There was a pause while Henry digested this curious dispatch from antediluvian times.
“Why didn’t you use your cell phones?” he asked.
“We didn’t have them,” I informed him ghoulishly. “Just phones in the home. So if you were out on the street and you needed a policeman, you’d have to find a police box and telephone from there.”
“But what if there wasn’t a police box around?” said Henry.
I struggled briefly to remember. My London youth had not been one of high adventure, and if I had ever had occasion to use a police box myself, I could not for the life of me think when or why.
“I don’t know,” I said, then. “I guess you’d just have to walk around until you found one.”
Henry thought some more.
“So if someone was mugging you,” he said then, “you’d stop them in mid-mug and say to them, ‘I say, look here, what ho, old bean …’”
Henry has recently discovered Jeeves and Wooster on YouTube.
“’… just hold on a jolly old moment, I’m going to toddle around town to find a special blue box to report you to the constable blighters, and I’ll be back in a jolly old jiffy?’”
When he put it like that, it did seem a somewhat curious sort of system.
Henry thought for another moment and shook his head.
“No wonder you guys wanted to go time traveling,” he said.
The reason that Mr. Los Angeles and I were staying with Henry and his family on the other side of town from ours, was that our own house was being fumigated for termites. The next morning, everyone else departed the ranch on various missions of work or scholarship, leaving me alone in the living room to finish writing an article. And a most pleasant living room it was, with a large picture window and a small table facing it on which I set up shop, typing diligently and occasionally looking out onto the quiet street outside, with the palm trees standing tall, the sky blazing blue, and the tall grasses in the front yards waving gently in the breeze.
And, quite soon, at the particularly large man with the face crimson and the blue eyes bulging with rage, who had suddenly appeared on the sidewalk, pacing impatiently, muttering imprecations, and glaring violently in all directions.
This being Los Angeles, we don’t necessarily expect every single person on our city streets to behave with impeccable decorum at every single hour of the day or night. But there is California-style eccentricity, and there is time to call the police. So, heaving a quiet sigh of relief that I was no longer living in dark ages London and required to go and find a blue telephone box somewhere in the jolly old ‘hood, I reached for my spiffy twenty-first century cell phone and called spiffy modern American 911.
“There’s a man acting very strangely,” I said to the person who answered, “on the 1900 block of Pampas Drive. He’s quite frightening, in fact, you might want to send someone to check him out.”
The person sighed.
“Name?” she said.
Frankly, I found this an odd sort of question.
“I don’t know his name,” I said. “And I’m not going to go up to him and ask him. He looks frightening.”
The person sighed again.
“I mean your name, Ma’am,” she said. “I’m required to take a report.”
“Oh,” I said. “Gabrielle.”
Abruptly, the man whipped his head in the direction of my window, and I ducked for cover behind the California peace lily.
“You know,” I hissed from my new hiding place, “I really think you should send some people out here very soon please.”
The person sighed a third time.
“Spelling?” she said.
“Double-ell-e,” I said. “And I really have to tell you …”
“Double-ell-e?” said the person. “Your name starts with Double-ell-e?”
“No,” I said. “It ends with double-ell-e. G-a-b and so on double-ell-e.”
“Gabelle?” she said.
“No,” I said. “Gabri-elle.”
Outside the window, the man now appeared to be scanning the front yards for a potential weapon.
“I’m starting to get quite scared here,” I informed my new friend. “So if you would please …”
“I am required to take a report, Ma’am,” the person reproved me. “So. It’s Gabri-elle.”
“Yes,” I said. “And this guy on the street …”
“Gabri-elle,” she confirmed.
“Yes,” I said.
“Last name,” she said.
Now, I am all in favor of helping the guardians of our streets to keep their paperwork in order. But if we’re talking having me spell out my last name while a deranged person searches for a weapon outside, well, mine is not impossible, but then it isn’t exactly Smith either.
“Can you just call me a concerned citizen?” I said. “And I really think we need some police help as soon as possible.”
The person continued to sigh.
“Address from which you’re calling?” she said.
Now we were getting somewhere.
“1963 Pampas Drive,” I reported, hopefully.
“Are you the home-owner?” she said.
“No,” I said. “And this guy outside …”
“Are you the tenant?” she said.
“No I’m not,” I said. “I’m here because I’m a friend of the owners. And I’m getting really frightened here and could use some police backup.”
There was the faint rustle of eyes being narrowed in suspicion.
“So you refuse to give your name,” she said. “And you’re calling from a property where you’re neither the home-owner nor the tenant, but you say you’re a friend of the owners.”
“I am a friend of the owners,” I said. “They’re not home now but if anyone wants to knock on the door when they come to deal with the crazy guy, I’d be happy to answer any questions they might want to ask. In between dealing with the crazy guy, of course.”
There was the quiet whistling of a head being shaken in gloom.
“And you say there is an individual on the street,” she said, “who is acting in an unusual manner.”
Hallelujah.
“A very unusual manner indeed,” I confirmed. “Unusual and frightening and I’d like you please to send a squad car here as soon as possible.”
“Are you able to describe the individual?” she said.
Now it was my turn to sigh.
“I am,” I said. “He’s the only person out on the street right now, and he’s the one who looks like he’s about to attack someone at any moment.”
“We are required to take a report, Ma’am,” she reminded me, sternly. “Are you able to describe the individual’s clothing?”
I had had enough.
“Please send someone to check out the street,” I said. “There’s a large man walking up and down the block who is frightening us all. Please just send someone out now.”
I hit the cut-off button for my oh so convenient 911 call on my oh so efficient modern cell phone. Then I left the living room and went back to the family den, to open the box that contained Henry’s discarded earlier childhood toys, and avail myself of his once-beloved Doctor Who special electronic Anti-Time Device. To be clear, the Anti-Time Device is not a gun, because the Doctor doesn’t approve of those; and it wouldn’t actually hurt anyone, because the Doctor would never do that either. But it does, as I recall, when pointed at a potential foe, nullify whatever danger they might pose by hurling them precipitously out of the here and now and directly into the mysterious space compound known as the Time Vortex, where they can cause no harm to anyone.
I figured that until the spiffy 21st century American police arrived, I could use all the help I could get.