SLUG: A05_ortho_in_full
SET: A
CONCEPT: Paying Emma's orthodontist in full
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 625

I called the orthodontist office and asked if I could pay Emma's balance in full and the receptionist asked me if I meant the payment plan.

I said no ma'am, the whole thing.

She got quiet.

I heard her type a few keys and then she paused, and I could tell she was double checking the number on her screen because it did not match the woman she thought she was talking to.

Emma is my granddaughter.

She's twelve and the rubber bands were pink this time and she picked them out herself standing on her tiptoes at the little tray by the door.

I need to tell you where I was in April to explain why that phone call meant what it meant.

I was $312 short on that same orthodontist bill.

I had the receipt for her rubber bands crumpled in my lap in the Walmart parking lot and I was crying so hard the person parked next to me got out of her car.

She knocked on my window.

I rolled it down because I did not have the strength to pretend I was okay.

She said honey whatever it is you don't have to carry it out here in a parking lot by yourself.

She sat down in my passenger seat with the door open and one foot on the pavement and she pulled out her phone.

She showed me a short setup video she had been running for about six months.

She said honey the whole thing runs off the house wifi and about twenty minutes of setup one Sunday morning.

She said it's a little phone thing, that's all it is.

I set it up the next morning before church.

I barely paid it any attention for the first couple weeks because I forgot about it.

Life got in the way.

Then the deposits started showing up on my Friday mornings.

First one was small.

Then a bigger one.

Then $1,100 landed and I sat at the kitchen table with my coffee and read the sender line four times because I thought I was seeing it wrong.

PHONE EARNINGS.

That's what it says.

I laughed the first time it showed up because it sounded like something a scammer would put in an email, and here I am months later with the sender line sitting on top of my inbox like a little stack of receipts I keep scrolling back through when I can't sleep.

Which brings me back to the phone call.

The receptionist finished typing and she said okay ma'am we have you paid in full through the end of treatment.

I said thank you.

I hung up in the parking lot of the same Walmart.

Different receipt in my lap this time.

Emma's next appointment written on the back of it in blue pen.

I sat there a long time.

I thought about the woman who knocked on my window in April and I wished I knew her last name so I could send her a card.

I don't.

So I'm doing the thing she told me to do.

Which is tell somebody.

If you are the person sitting in a parking lot right now with a receipt in your lap and a number in your head that does not add up, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me.

Runs off the wifi.

About twenty minutes on a Sunday.

You do the little bit of setup and then you kind of go live your week and check the phone on Fridays.

If you got a phone and you got wifi you can do it too.

Pass it on to somebody the way she passed it on to me.
