From impalings to independence — it's just another day
On Mother's Day a half-dozen years ago, I was running errands when I got pulled over by a cop for talking on my phone. He said there was a special on lectures. I took it. It was long and pretty sarcastic.
It was a harbinger.
Once I was back on the road with my hide a bit chapped, my wife called to tell me that our daughter, 9, had fallen out of a tree and impaled her leg on a stick. Luckily, although there was blood and crying, it turned out to not be that bad.
Later in the day I had to go to the store. Again, I got a call from the wife. This time to inform me that our 4-year old had just been picked up by the police. Not for a stabbing, which was my first thought. Just another day in the Clark household.
Our little boy had a friend in the neighborhood and they would play in the bushes in a “hide-out” and have snacks. They would run around and occasionally knock on neighbors doors' and ask for snacks, which they often received. To be fair, his friend was a very friendly little girl who had a way with words.
Apparently good snacks were not forthcoming that day, so they decided to walk about four blocks down to a local pizza parlor. They were dressed only in swimsuits (no shoes, no shirts). They walked into the pizza parlor and asked for pizza and soda. Oh, they also had no money. So naturally the pizza parlor said — yes. And gave them pizza and soda for free.
In the meantime, their absence had been noted and parents and neighbors started looking for them. Looking in bushes, checking other houses.
Back at the pizza parlor, the employees called the police and said there were two little children unaccompanied and eating pizza. Around the same time our kids decided they were done eating and got up to walk home. The pizza people did not stop them. “Bye kids, come again.”
The police got there, found that the kids had left and picked them up about a block and half from our house. Under intense questioning as to where they lived and why they were running around alone, my son told the police “My parents are dead.” It is good to have a cover story.
The police checked around and saw some of our neighbors who were looking for the kids and found out where we lived. The children were returned home and the cops yelled at my wife about how her kids could be taken away by CPS and all sorts of crap. Happy Mother's Day!
I am not sure if our son learned any kind of lesson from this. He got free pizza and a police escort home. Later when I told him dinner was ready, he said he already had dinner “at the Pizza Store.”
In related news, we have always briefed our kids that if they are, in fact, picked up by police that they should clam up and ask for their lawyer. And yes, they know who their lawyer is.
I tell this story for a couple of reasons. First, it is a great story capped by the “parents are dead” line by the 4-yearold. Second, we have had police talk to us about our kids on more than one occasion. For letting the kids walk a couple of blocks on their own to the Sub Shop to buy sandwiches (thank you “helpful” passerby for alerting the police). For letting a 12-year-old sit in the car while I went into the store (he did not want to go in). People have “found and returned” our children because we were letting them ride bikes around the neighborhood when they were little — 4 or 5 — with no one watching them. We had our oldest ride his bike by himself to the grocery store several blocks away when he was 6 to buy milk or other small items that we needed.
And what was the result of all this lawlessness with our feral children? Our children have grown up to be very independent and able to function on their own, especially by today's standards. They can talk on the phone, deal with business people, many things, by themselves. So hopefully, some younger parents reading about this, can feel better if they, too, let their kids do things and occasionally get yelled at by the police.