My husband and I have a rule: no phones during dinner. Last night, in the middle of our meal, his phone lit up. He glanced at it but kept eating. Five minutes later,

it buzzed repeatedly. This time, he picked it up and shouted, “OH NO! MOM!” He called the police, gave them his mom’s address, and ran out.

An hour later, he called me, sounding exhausted, and explained: his mom had told him on the phone that there had been a burglary.

Panicking, he called the police and rushed to her house. It turned out someone had just stolen her potatoes from the garden in the morning, but she had made it sound much worse on the phone.

By the time she clarified, two police officers had already arrived. My husband tried to explain the misunderstanding to them, and to say he was embarrassed would be an understatement.