Come to the rescue

Come to the rescue

All right, today’s expression is to “come to the rescue.” When you come to the rescue, you save someone from a bad situation. Do you remember which one of our five companies came to the rescue for small businesses everywhere? That would be Shopify.

I run an online business and I know that it’s not easy to get an e-commerce site up and running. So imagine you have a comic-book store or a bike store or a clothing boutique. You might or might not even have a website. Now the pandemic hits: you have customers who would shop online, but you don’t have an e-commerce site. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of companies that can get a brick-and-mortar business online quickly. But there is one good one: Shopify.

Shopify is an easy, fast, and affordable way for a small business to start selling online. They came to the rescue of thousands of small businesses that needed an online store quickly. They saved those small businesses from a bad situation. They came to the rescue.

Here’s another example. If you need to go out at night unexpectedly, you might need someone to watch your young kids. Something came up—a family emergency, a work emergency—and you can’t be at home. A friendly neighbor might come to the rescue and offer to watch your kids.

I discovered I made a mistake in the audio of a previous lesson and I decided I needed to remove a full paragraph from the audio and the transcript. I had already recorded the audio; JR had already edited it and uploaded it to the media host. I had left for vacation and I was in a tiny town without good internet. Guess what? JR came to the rescue. I told him the paragraph I needed removed. He removed it and replaced the files. JR came to the rescue: he saved me from a bad situation.

I have a couch at home that’s pretty old (vintage! It’s vintage) and the cushions are worn, but it’s otherwise in good shape. When you sit down, you just kind of sink way down. I wanted to replace the filling of the cushions. I know a local store that can do that. But because of the design of the couch, the local store could only replace the seat cushions; they could not replace the back cushions you lean back on—it’s a long story.

So I called the manufacturer of the couch and asked if I could buy replacement cushions. Unfortunately, they stopped making this model many years ago. But the employee there came to the rescue. She knew they still had some extra back cushions left over just for this purpose and she arranged for me to buy them and pick them up at a local store near Chicago. She really came to my rescue because I like this couch, and it’s otherwise in good shape; I just didn’t like the way the cushions were worn out. By replacing the cushions, I can still use this couch, hopefully, for a long time in the future.

This example hopefully illustrates that “come to the rescue” doesn’t always have to be a serious situation. I was never in grave danger here. But that employee at the furniture warehouse did still come to my rescue; she did still save me from a bad situation.

JR’s Song of the Week

Today’s song of the week is “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. It’s one of their most popular songs. The lead singer of Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, wrote that song as she was in the process of breaking up with another band member. One of the early lines is, “You say you want your freedom; well, who am I to keep you down?” Ironically, the other band member wrote a song about their breakup too. That one was called “Go Your Own Way.” Luckily for us, the band stayed together and continued to produce good music. Fleetwood Mac is one of my favorite bands from the 70s. “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac is JR’s song of the week. And remember that members of all levels, including Free members, can play the song of the week directly from their dashboards at PlainEnglish.com.

See you next time!

That’s all for today! Congratulations for making it to the end of another Plain English lesson. We’ll be back, as always, on Thursday, as we continue to creep toward number 300. How about that.

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So remember, you can see that sample lesson at PlainEnglish.com/sample .