I just had to share this story…it is one that has, over the last week, managed to make me laugh just enough to take my mind off of my mother’s unexpected death last Friday.
Before I discovered my mother lying dead in her house (she was 50 and in exceedingly poor health), I had told my step-daughter that I would chaperone her fourteenth birthday party at our house. She wanted to have a few friends over so they could watch movies, make brownies, and read teen magazines. Despite the fact that my mom had died the day before, I told her that she shouldn’t have to postpone her party and that I didn’t feel like being alone anyway so it would work out well for both of us.
I get a call from her on my cell phone around 5 in the afternoon the day of the party. She says that she and her friends, who have been running around town all day using public transportation (which is only cool because they can’t drive yet, I’m sure), have met up with some guy friends of theirs and she wants to know if they can come over for a couple hours to watch a movie or hang out or whatever. I tell her I’ll call her back. I call her father, because he makes final decisions about stuff like that. He says it’s okay as long as the boys leave around 10 or 11 (he leaves the exact time up to me). I call my SD back and tell her the scoop.
She then calls me while I am eating dinner with my uncle (mom’s brother) and asks me if it is okay if four boys come over instead of two. I say that’s fine and head home after another 20 or so minutes.
They all arrive at the house. Within the first split second, the guys discover our pool table and begin organizing a game among the four of them. The girls run off to change into sweats and stuff.
The night goes without a hitch. My policy on chaperoning parties is to make sure everyone knows they are visible and that I can walk in anytime. So I leave them pretty much alone.
10 o’clock rolls around and I advise the boys and the girls that it’s time for the co-ed party to come to an end. By about 10:20 the boys were driving away from the house. All’s well that end’s well, right? We’ll see…
So I sit down in the den to watch the last half of Brokedown Palace. Our dog starts barking about 15 minutes later. I think, what the hell is she barking at now? She barks at rustling leaves after all, so I just ignore her for a while. Then she starts barking and growling like there is really something out there. By the way, we live out in the country so there is never anything out there besides the local wildlife (but she doesn’t really bark that much at other animals).
I start getting a little freaked out so I go to my bedroom where I have access to switches that will turn on every outside perimeter light. I flick them on and go to the back door to see what the dog is freaking out about. I peer into the darkness almost beyond the reach of the security lights and see four human figures running away from the house through the pasture behind us.
Goddamn teenagers, I think to myself. So I tell the girls to call one of the boys’ cell phones and see where they tell them they are. Turns out, they tell the girls that they are playing basketball at the courts near our house. We don’t have basketball courts, so I knew the boys were lying and I knew it had to be they running around the “ranch” as we call it.
So as I stand there having a cigarette considering whether or not to call the sheriff’s office, my SD and I discuss the idiosyncracies of the Teenage Boy. Then I see that they are now in a pick-up creeping down the road by our house with just their parking lights on (like I somehow can’t see the parking lights in the pitch black).
Then her father comes in the door and I realize they must have done that because they saw him coming up the road. We tell him what’s going on and decide to set the security alarm, and go to bed. I need to mention here that the security alarm is not effective on windows…just doors. Our windows stay locked when we are home and when we are away. It is merely an intrusion alarm meant to scare potential punk burglars away and prevent really valuable, large goods from being stolen. My SD knows this and asks if it is okay if they open a very small window in her bathroom so they can have some ventilation throughout the night. We say fine (it is a window too small and too high for anyone to enter or exit).
I wake up in the morning needing to make some calls regarding my mom’s funeral, and my six year old son is up and has already had cereal. He says to me, “Mom, those boys were in my room last night.” At first, I figured that he must have had a dream because he was in the house with us during the party and he knew what the boys looked like and everything. I asked him what he meant and he said, “They were in my window last night.” Just then, father comes in and I tell him to listen to my son. Now we are both very curious about the condition of my son’s bedroom window.
We go look and the screen is bent all to hell and lying on the ground outside the window. The window itself is not completely closed (it’s difficult to get a good grip on a window from the outside).
So when the girls finally emerge from my SD’s room, we separate each of them just like the cops would do with any potential accomplices and interrogate them. They have no idea that my son was awakened by these boys leaving the house, so it starts to get really interesting. My SD pulls the “I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about” angle and father just tells her that we need to get past this bullshit 'cause we already know it happened. She finally confesses, as do the other two.
Forgetting for a moment that they took selfish advantage of me, I want to laugh in their faces because they have just learned (for the second time…that’s another story) that they can’t get away with shit and I took pleasure from the fact that they were mortified about getting caught.
I was right about one thing though. I was definitely distracted from my sorrow.
