This morning, as I was packing up my laptop and files so I could schlep into Manhattan for a meeting, the doorbell buzzed.
"Who is it?" I called into the intercom. It was a little early for UPS; my money was on Mormons or ConEd.
"Police," said the intercom.
This seemed highly unlikely, so instead of buzzing in the "police" I walked to the front door, where there were indeed two of New York's finest standing on the stoop.
"Yes?" I asked, opening the door. I expected them to say they were going door-to-door alerting people about something. Or maybe this was about that weird truck that had been parked across the street for two weeks, which Steven and I had been theorizing was either a mobile terrorist cell or the CIA.
"We got a call for help from your apartment," said one of the cops.
"I don't think so," I said.
"From a small child," said the officer - he seemed to be the designated talker. "Do you have any children?"
"Yes, but he's 13 months old," I said.
"Well," said the officer, "someone from your apartment dialed zero and hung up. When that happens we have to dispatch a unit."
Two thoughts ran simultaneously through my mind. The first was that I now finally knew how to get a member of the NYPD to show up at my door. I remembered back to a night four years earlier when, after multiple 2am calls to the police about a car alarm that had been going off for all night, Steven and I had finally slept in the living room. The police had said they were busy.
The second thought was that Milo had made his first successful phone call.
"My son sometimes plays with the phone," I explained. He'd probably dialed zeo by accident, screamed "mama dada broom up!" into the phone, and hung up.
"We still need to check the apartment," said the officer. The came in and looked around, then asked to see the baby, who had of course just fallen asleep. I took them into Milo's room where they shined a flashlight into his face to make sure he was alive. Milo immediately woke up and started crying.
"Okay," said the officer. "Seems fine."
"Thanks," I said, following them out of the nursery. "Sorry."
"We just have to check these things out," said the cop.
We both stood in the front hall feeling slightly ridiculous, and then the police left.
"Sorry I'm late," I said when I got to my meeting. "My son called the cops."