After reading the short story “A Phone Call” by Auburn Sandstorm, the author wants the reader to understand that one act of kindness can make a huge impact on someone else’s life. Auburn was twenty-nine years old during the year 1992 living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She and her abusive husband were addicted to drugs and had a baby boy that they didn’t take good care of. Growing up, she had a very privileged life and had an expensive undergraduate college paid for. Auburn realized in her early twenties that some people didn’t have privileged lives like hers, “It was a huge revelation for me. I came to the conclusion that the thing I needed to do with my privilege and all the comfort that I’d had all my life was to destroy it. Rip it in half. Spit on in. Piss on it. Set it on fire” (Sandstorm 1). She thought that ruining her life was going to make her feel better about other people's lives. By using powerful words like “destroy, rip, spit, set on fire” the reader can sense how angry the author is about a privileged life growing up. At this point, she is resenting her formal lifestyle. Soon after she made this decision, a man came into her life. At the time, he was forty and she was twenty-four years old. One of his old activist friends introduced them to the drug they are now addicted to. She tried to turn her life around, “But instead of transformation, you have me going ninety miles an hour down 1-94 with my poet, in a car full of alcohol and illegal drugs. The baby’s in the car seat (it’s probably not a regulation car seat). He’s covered in candy and chocolate, because you have to keep the baby entertained while you’re taking care of your business, getting yourself some relief” (Sandstorm 1). She knew that at this moment if she was pulled over she would go to jail and her baby would be taken from her. By using visual imagery the author helps the reader to imagine what that car ride was like. Auburn knew that underneath all of her withdrawal and terrible anxiety, she was leading a life that was going to lead her to lose the most precious thing in her life, her baby. She was so desperate for this not to happen that she punched the number of a Christian counselor into the phone that her mother gave her, “I hadn’t told anybody, including myself, the truth, for a long, long time. And I told him I wasn’t feeling so good, and that I was scared, and that things had gotten pretty bad in my marriage. Before long I started telling him other truths like I might have a drug problem, and I really, really love my husband, and I wouldn’t want you to say anything bad about him, but he has hit me a few times. And there was a time when he pushed my child and me out into the cold and slammed the door behind us. And there was a time when we were going sixty miles an hour down the highway, and he tried to push us out of the moving vehicle. I started telling those truths. And this man didn’t judge me. He just sat with me, and was present, and listened, and had such kindness and such a gentleness” (Sandstorm 2). When the phone call started, it had been two in the morning, and they ended up staying up the whole night. She just kept talking and he just kept on listening. Auburn described him as having “kindness and gentleness”, two attributes that the people in her life don’t often show her. After a while, she started asking him about being a Christian counselor, but he just changed the conversation. In a little while she asked him again. He said he would only tell her if she didn’t hang up on him, “‘I’m so afraid to tell you this. But the number you called…’ He pauses again. ‘You got the wrong number’” (Sandstorm 3). Auburn didn’t hang up on him and they talked for a little while longer. It turns out that she would never talk to that man ever again, but the next day she felt great. Even though he told her that she called the “wrong number” it was the right number that night. She learned that there was random love in the universe. This made it possible for her to change her whole life around, “And it also became possible as a teetotaling, semi-sane, single parent to raise up that precious, chocolate-covered baby boy into a magnificent young scholar and athlete, who graduated from Princeton University in 2013 with honors” (Sandstorm 3). Some random man who luckily picked up the phone one night changed her and her son's lives around with just one call. By referring to her son as the “chocolate-covered baby boy” Auburn wants the reader to realize how far she has come from that terrible night. Just one act of kindness can help someone in ways that you would have never imagined.