It would seem that I have not provided my children with enough activities this summer, or that summer vacation is just too long.

My daughter talked me into buying her a hermit crab and my son has resorted to juvenile delinquency.

Last weekend I took my daughter to the lake for the weekend. We invited my neighbor and her daughter up and had a nice time hanging around doing little more than swimming and eating. I left my son back in the cities since he had plans and was spending the night at a friends house. We were only gone for one night.

When I returned home I had a message on my house phone as well as one on my cell phone. Because the cabin is in the middle of nowhere and I have AT&T I never actually receive calls on the cell phone, I just get the voice mails hours later. Because of this I don’t check my phone all that much.

To my surprise the voice mails both said the same thing which was that my son, the kid who never leaves the house, had been picked up the night before by the police for being out past curfew and for causing property damage. I was given a number to call. I called the number as soon as I got the message which was about 14 hours after it was left. I got a recording telling me the office was closed and to call back Monday morning. There were no messages telling me where my son was. I called his cell phone and got voice mail, I called both of his friends who he was with and also got voice mail. After calling each of them at least three times and leaving more desperate messages I sent my daughter over to the neighbor’s house and went to the friends house he had spent the night at.

The boys mother answered and filled me in on what had happened and then three very sheepish looking boys appeared to tell me what had happened.

Now I have to do a little back story. I’ve posted a couple of times about the evil child that lives down the block. I might not have used that word exactly but trust me she is. She makes my daughter cry just about every day. Why my daughter still wants to play with her I don’t understand except there are only two girls on the block to play with and she isn’t all that choosy. This evil child does not like her, I don’t know why and neither does anyone else, at least my other two neighbors who all think they are crazy and stay away from this family. My son had tried to convince his sister that she doesn’t need this little girl to play with, that since she doesn’t want to play with her she should just accept it and move on. Easy for him to say since he is able to make friends with kids who live farther away. The daughter isn’t driving yet and is sadly stuck with the kids in the neighborhood. The day before we left to the lake the evil child was outside taunting my daughter, daughter cried and son got fed up apparently.

So my son is out with his friends, going to Taco Bell for a late night snack. While eating fast food they decided to cause a little mischief. They drive by this family’s house and throw six eggs at it. This was at midnight or so. They drove off and were headed back home when one of the kids, not my son, reached out the window and grabbed a garbage can and hung onto while the car was going. The people who had just had their house egged called the police who must have been in the neighborhood, and so while they were carrying this garbage can down the street the cops flashed their lights to pull them over. If this had been back when I was a teenager the cops would have stopped us, confiscated any booze we had in the car, and then told us to go home. Today it’s a little different and since most kids, at least the kids like my son and his friends who never leave the computer and actually go outside, don’t do the stupid things we did when I was a kid, teens are either in a gang or not out, the cops take any bit of mischief very seriously. It also doesn’t help when the kid who is driving panics and refuses to stop.

What could have been just a story about boys being boys turned into a very serious possible felony for the kid who was driving and didn’t stop for a block. Eventually he did stop and no one was hurt but during the “chase” the cops called in reinforcements. Eight squad cars pulled up and cuffed the kids and brought them down to the station. All kids sang like canaries and fessed up to the egg throwing with little encouragement from the police. These are not bad kids. In fact they are so bad at being bad that the kid on the block who really is a trouble maker thinks they are wusses…still. This little incident did nothing to elevate their cool factor or street cred.

So the boys are headed over to apologize to the crazy family who treats my daughter horribly. They are to apologize, to act as humble as possible, and to make any restitution necessary. They caused no damage, nothing was broken, hopefully this will cost nothing more than some embarrassment.

I’ve tried to come up with a punishment for my son, as have the other mothers. One of the mothers was just so tickled that it wasn’t her other son that she gave her son, who is one of the nicest kids in the world, a pass. The other mother has her son doing some yard work. All I can come up with is to make my kid clean his room, which is not an easy task, keep it that way, and then to refrain from doing anything like this again. He lost the use of his computer for a week as well. And even that seems harsh. The police are not charging them with anything, they got off with a warning and I think the scare they got with the police was punishment enough, along with making restitution with the neighbor and cleaning up any mess they made. I can’t ground him because he doesn’t go out and even though what he did was wrong his heart was in the right place and I have a hard time punishing him for caring about his sister.

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