My Son and His Brush With The Law

About 3:00 pm yesterday, #4 and his buddy Junior came up to me and asked if they could walk to the convenience store (about 1/3 a mile away). “Do you have any money?” I asked. “No” they answered. “Well then, the answer is no, but you can walk up Cricket Bat Road as long as you stay on the other side of the ditch and not on the road.” My policy is that if they have no money and go to the store, they’ll be tempted to shoplift.

“Yes, ma’am, we will.”
“Be home by 5:30″
“Yes ma’am”

Cricket Bat Road is about a mile long. I figured if they walk to the end and walk back, they’ll come home tired and thirsty and I’d have a pitcher of Koolaid for them.

So, ’round about 5:30, I’m in the kitchen working on supper, and thinking it was time for them to be getting home when I hear a loud banging on the front door. The only person who bangs like that is the FedEx man but I’m not expecting a package. I went to the door and noticed a uniform through the window and thought perhaps it was some other package delivery service, and I opened the door to find standing there

A very stern looking Deputy Sheriff. And #4 with his head in his hands making snuffling noises.
“Ma’am, do you know where you son was?” he asked.
“Ummm…he was supposed to be on Cricket Bat Road, up that-a-way.” I pointed north.
“Well, ma’am, he was on the bypass, to the south, crossing the bypass at the Baptist Church.”
(The bypass is Statesboro’s answer to Atlanta’s Perimeter,or DC’s Beltway, and every bit as busy)
“WHAT?!”
“WHAT?!”
I’m not a cursing sort of person but this was a huge OMGWTF! moment.
I got a lecture about how unsafe the bypass is for anyone, especially children and responsibility as parents and blah blah. The whole time I’m looking at #4 and wondering how he’d look as a meat pie.
So, I asked if junior had been picked up as well, and the DS said yes, that apparently the boys had been trying to get to a friend of Junior’s house, and Junior had some idea that he lived somewhere down the bypass near the church. Which, by the way, is over 2 miles south.

Well, at least he wasn’t picked up for shoplifting, which was my first impulse.

After the Deputy left, I yelled and waved my arms around and sent him to his room (that I had spent OVER 3 hours cleaning, as a favor to him)for the night, no supper.

When Sweet Daddio got home, around 6, I said to him “Your Son did (this) and you need to go yell at him.”
So he did, and nobody rants like SD when he’s properly motivated. The end result is that #4 is grounded until puberty…ok, maybe not that long, but certainly until school starts August 1.

What I don’t know, is who starts this stuff- #4, or Junior, or if each kid is a catalyst for the other and alone they’d not get into this sort of thing but together…*boom*