Do You Know Where Your Teens Are?
Well, if it was on Tuesday night at 9:15, I happen to know where they were…up in the pine tree in my front yard. And despite what they may have told you, there was no poor little kitten to rescue or tacky Christmas decorations to help remove. Now granted…your kids may have come home with some soiled shorts…but it’s probably not a bad thing for them to be tossed anyway. They don’t fit and I imagine that while running for your life from a crazed Marine chasing you from his front yard after dark…it might be hard to keep your pants up when they are 3 sizes too big. I’m just saying.
So let me start from the beginning. Tuesday was a day like any other. I had a sick child home with me all day, held a Tupperware party in the afternoon, then spent 2 hours at the doctor’s office…returning home with 3 brown bags full of medicine that hopefully will keep my daughter from looking like someone punched her in the eyes during this beautiful season of pollen. My husband got home at a decent hour and cooked a great meal for his family. After the 45 minute lecture and demonstration on the new medicinal routine, our daughter was sent off to bed with a new double dose of Zyrtec and instructions to “come let us know” if she felt “weird”. Ahhh…another successful bedtime, and Mommy and Daddy headed off to find something we could both agree to watch on the DVR.
About 9:10 we heard what we thought were the bounding footsteps of a 7 year old coming down the stairs above us to report on “weird” medicine. But after 30 seconds and no child in our room, I instructed my husband to go check on her to make sure she wasn’t stumbling around drunk on Zyrtec upstairs. What I heard instead was “What the HELL?! There’s someone in our tree in the front yard”!
Now, for those of you who know me, this will not come as a surprise, but for those who don’t let me just give a little explanation of what it means to be…well…me. I am a self-proclaimed sissy when it comes to matters of being in my household at night. Even when Joey is right beside me sleeping there are nights when I am just scared silly. On those nights I will literally will my bladder to magically evaporate the liquid inside…rather than leave the security of my comforter for the bathroom. I have always had this strange phobia about being covered in only a sheet at night. In the summer it drives my husband crazy that I turn the air conditioning down to 69 and then crawl under the down comforter. But if you put just a sheet on me, I am a nervous wreck all night. It is totally reasonable for me to believe that in the middle of the night a crazed serial killer will break into my home, sneak into my bedroom with the intention of slaying me in my sleep…only to find that I have my magical coat of comforter armor on. “Foiled again!” he will proclaim as he leaves my house…doing no harm.
So at the first mention of human beings in our tree 8 feet from our front window, I am frantically looking for the phone proclaiming “I am calling the cops!” After finally finding the phone and trying to remember the phone number for 911, the dispatcher only had to ask me 3 times what the problem was. In all fairness I was a little bit distracted by the events in the front yard. You see after spotting the teenagers in our front yard my husband went back to the bedroom, put on his pants and a shirt and bounded out the front door. I also fumbled around looking for pants to put on since I was just in a tank top and little shorts and if you have read my other blogs you know how I feel about being exposed in my front yard during an emergency. It is kind of like my comforter phobia. It is totally reasonable to think that during a huge 5 home blaze, the news reporters will instead choose to headline their story and front page picture as “Woman in her 30’s DARES to step outside in her pasty white thighs”. But anyway, where were we?
Oh yes, my husband was flying out the front door yelling in his “Gunny” voice saying “You better have a freaking good reason to be in my tree at 9 oclock at night”! What is a Gunny voice you ask? Well lemme explain. My husband is a pretty mild mannered person, even when he is angry in our house and raises his voice it is not terribly loud. But I know that on occasion he has had to use a very strong powerful voice to chew out some young Marine for doing something dumb. The voice I heard that night was unlike anything I had heard before from my husband. Later that evening he said “It kinda turned you on didn’t it?”…to which I replied “Yeah it would have if I wasn’t shaking in fear and peeing myself.”
Apparently the voice didn’t have a nice effect on the 4 teenage boys in the yard either as 3 of them took off running for their lives, leaving the one kid hanging up in the tree. So the next thing I hear my husband say (back to his normal everyday nice guy voice) was “uh, hey dude…do you need some help getting out of that tree?” By this time I am off the phone with the police who said a squad car was on the way. I was trying to wrap my mind around what was going on. What in the world had the sound been above our bed? What were the kids doing in the tree? Would my tight yoga pants and crocs look good on the front page of the news tomorrow? I still had no idea what that bounding sound had been so I went upstairs to investigate. I could hear the cheesy horror movie music in my head with every step I took…and I really thought, “great we just got the carpets cleaned and I am going to throw up”. Morgan was of course passed out (thank you new dosage of Zyrtec) and had not heard a single thing. I thought that perhaps I should check under the bed and in the closets and behind the shower curtain. But then I remembered that I didn’t have on my comforter cloak so I ran back downstairs to enlist my husband for the job. Morgan was under her comforter…she would be just fine.
As it turns out, there were no serial killers hiding in the closet or crouching in the tub with a sea of Polly Pockets and Barbie parts, so Joey and I waited outside for the Sheriff to arrive. As we did, the teenagers walked back by our yard commenting in that totally non sarcastic, respectful teenager voice that “It’s not illegal to walk on the side of the road man”. My husband, who had calmed down by now and was ready to just go to sleep, went to go talk to the kids. He was very nice, and I let him handle the situation as he talked to the boys about how stupid it was for them to be on someone’s property like that and asking them what did they think he should have done after finding hoodlums in his tree at night. I just wanted to go sit em all down in my yard and make them listen to me lecture about the dangers of night jaywalking until the Sheriff arrived. In my mind I was fantasizing about having them each write 500 sentences “I will not scare the pee out of my neighbor lady”…over and over again. As it turns out, Joey let them go on walking so I didn’t get to exact my revenge by making them pick up every pine needle in my yard…with their teeth.
We don’t know if the law ever caught up with them, but the Sheriff who came to the house did say he would go look for them and scare them a little. He drove away, and we went back inside…greeted by Dexter the Wonder Dog who had finally decided to drag his body out of the bedroom and see if the Sheriff was here to pet him. Perhaps lately I can say that the poor dog is losing his hearing, but even in his “younger” days he didn’t care if 4 strange service men visited the house while I was home alone in the afternoon. Oh boy, but let a rabbit run across the yard and he is a fierce, fierce dog. I sleep better knowing no bunnies will be able to break the window and hop off with our surround sound.
This story is quite comical to me now. We even laughed that night thinking that Joey has turned into “that guy” who yells at the teenagers to “get off my lawn”! I can now picture him in pants pulled up to his ribs with a cane chasing kids off his grass in his old age. But there was a point in the evening, where no kidding aside…I was very upset and scared. It truly is one of my biggest fears in life that someone would be in my home at night…or do something to my child. Hearing strange voices right outside of your window sounding like they are attempting to climb on your roof is unsettling to say the least. As soon as we came back inside and were getting ready for bed I noticed that my jaw was killing me, I had a terrible headache and I felt sick to my stomach. All the proof I need that stress is indeed my enemy as far as pain management goes. (For weeks I had been feeling much better.)
The other part of me, besides being really scared…was really mad. The one kid that was still in the tree when the others fled from my husband’s booming voice, looked to be all of 12 years old. What in the world were those kids doing just hanging out, walking the streets at night? I realize that when we were kids there was a lot more freedom to roam the neighborhood, but everyone I knew still had to be home by the time the street lights went on. Not only was I angered that these kids were allowed to scare me in my own home by their silly antics…but I was angered at the danger their parents are putting them in. We live in a military community and a lot of people here own guns. Now, this is not an attempt to get into a debate about gun control, so please don’t even begin that conversation with me…it is not the point of this. The fact is, people have them and feel the right to protect their property. And a lot of wives learn how to use a gun when their Marine is deployed…which around here is more often than not these days. The night could have gone very differently if someone had thought those kids were actually breaking into a home and used a gun to defend their family. The kids were young and I don’t care if they were in a group of 4…there are crazy people out there who will harm children, it happens every single day. And screwing around in someone else’s yard, chasing your friend up a tree may not be harmful…but if that kid had fallen and broken his neck…the parents could have sued the pants off the retired couple that own our home. I hope that my husband yelling at them and the hopeful visit from the Sheriff served to do the kids a favor that night…scare them now…instead of when they are spending their first night in jail for breaking into a house on a dare. Or worse yet scaring some sense into their parents after they have been seriously hurt, or killed.
There was not much sleeping on my part that night. Every crick, creek or imaginary sound the house made was amplified by 1000 and I just couldn’t get over the anger towards the parents of those kids. I really will never understand why those kids were out after dark and not at home in bed or spending hours in front of a computer or video game system. I doubt they will ever be messing around in our yard again, but if they ever do…this time I will be prepared. We bought a new phone that hangs on the wall, I am practicing my front yard lecture and have new pencils and paper for sentence writing. Write this one parents “I will know where my kids are at night…and it will not be in my neighbor ladies tree.” Now, 499 more times please…
Many Kind Regards…
Erin
So let me start from the beginning. Tuesday was a day like any other. I had a sick child home with me all day, held a Tupperware party in the afternoon, then spent 2 hours at the doctor’s office…returning home with 3 brown bags full of medicine that hopefully will keep my daughter from looking like someone punched her in the eyes during this beautiful season of pollen. My husband got home at a decent hour and cooked a great meal for his family. After the 45 minute lecture and demonstration on the new medicinal routine, our daughter was sent off to bed with a new double dose of Zyrtec and instructions to “come let us know” if she felt “weird”. Ahhh…another successful bedtime, and Mommy and Daddy headed off to find something we could both agree to watch on the DVR.
About 9:10 we heard what we thought were the bounding footsteps of a 7 year old coming down the stairs above us to report on “weird” medicine. But after 30 seconds and no child in our room, I instructed my husband to go check on her to make sure she wasn’t stumbling around drunk on Zyrtec upstairs. What I heard instead was “What the HELL?! There’s someone in our tree in the front yard”!
Now, for those of you who know me, this will not come as a surprise, but for those who don’t let me just give a little explanation of what it means to be…well…me. I am a self-proclaimed sissy when it comes to matters of being in my household at night. Even when Joey is right beside me sleeping there are nights when I am just scared silly. On those nights I will literally will my bladder to magically evaporate the liquid inside…rather than leave the security of my comforter for the bathroom. I have always had this strange phobia about being covered in only a sheet at night. In the summer it drives my husband crazy that I turn the air conditioning down to 69 and then crawl under the down comforter. But if you put just a sheet on me, I am a nervous wreck all night. It is totally reasonable for me to believe that in the middle of the night a crazed serial killer will break into my home, sneak into my bedroom with the intention of slaying me in my sleep…only to find that I have my magical coat of comforter armor on. “Foiled again!” he will proclaim as he leaves my house…doing no harm.
So at the first mention of human beings in our tree 8 feet from our front window, I am frantically looking for the phone proclaiming “I am calling the cops!” After finally finding the phone and trying to remember the phone number for 911, the dispatcher only had to ask me 3 times what the problem was. In all fairness I was a little bit distracted by the events in the front yard. You see after spotting the teenagers in our front yard my husband went back to the bedroom, put on his pants and a shirt and bounded out the front door. I also fumbled around looking for pants to put on since I was just in a tank top and little shorts and if you have read my other blogs you know how I feel about being exposed in my front yard during an emergency. It is kind of like my comforter phobia. It is totally reasonable to think that during a huge 5 home blaze, the news reporters will instead choose to headline their story and front page picture as “Woman in her 30’s DARES to step outside in her pasty white thighs”. But anyway, where were we?
Oh yes, my husband was flying out the front door yelling in his “Gunny” voice saying “You better have a freaking good reason to be in my tree at 9 oclock at night”! What is a Gunny voice you ask? Well lemme explain. My husband is a pretty mild mannered person, even when he is angry in our house and raises his voice it is not terribly loud. But I know that on occasion he has had to use a very strong powerful voice to chew out some young Marine for doing something dumb. The voice I heard that night was unlike anything I had heard before from my husband. Later that evening he said “It kinda turned you on didn’t it?”…to which I replied “Yeah it would have if I wasn’t shaking in fear and peeing myself.”
Apparently the voice didn’t have a nice effect on the 4 teenage boys in the yard either as 3 of them took off running for their lives, leaving the one kid hanging up in the tree. So the next thing I hear my husband say (back to his normal everyday nice guy voice) was “uh, hey dude…do you need some help getting out of that tree?” By this time I am off the phone with the police who said a squad car was on the way. I was trying to wrap my mind around what was going on. What in the world had the sound been above our bed? What were the kids doing in the tree? Would my tight yoga pants and crocs look good on the front page of the news tomorrow? I still had no idea what that bounding sound had been so I went upstairs to investigate. I could hear the cheesy horror movie music in my head with every step I took…and I really thought, “great we just got the carpets cleaned and I am going to throw up”. Morgan was of course passed out (thank you new dosage of Zyrtec) and had not heard a single thing. I thought that perhaps I should check under the bed and in the closets and behind the shower curtain. But then I remembered that I didn’t have on my comforter cloak so I ran back downstairs to enlist my husband for the job. Morgan was under her comforter…she would be just fine.
As it turns out, there were no serial killers hiding in the closet or crouching in the tub with a sea of Polly Pockets and Barbie parts, so Joey and I waited outside for the Sheriff to arrive. As we did, the teenagers walked back by our yard commenting in that totally non sarcastic, respectful teenager voice that “It’s not illegal to walk on the side of the road man”. My husband, who had calmed down by now and was ready to just go to sleep, went to go talk to the kids. He was very nice, and I let him handle the situation as he talked to the boys about how stupid it was for them to be on someone’s property like that and asking them what did they think he should have done after finding hoodlums in his tree at night. I just wanted to go sit em all down in my yard and make them listen to me lecture about the dangers of night jaywalking until the Sheriff arrived. In my mind I was fantasizing about having them each write 500 sentences “I will not scare the pee out of my neighbor lady”…over and over again. As it turns out, Joey let them go on walking so I didn’t get to exact my revenge by making them pick up every pine needle in my yard…with their teeth.
We don’t know if the law ever caught up with them, but the Sheriff who came to the house did say he would go look for them and scare them a little. He drove away, and we went back inside…greeted by Dexter the Wonder Dog who had finally decided to drag his body out of the bedroom and see if the Sheriff was here to pet him. Perhaps lately I can say that the poor dog is losing his hearing, but even in his “younger” days he didn’t care if 4 strange service men visited the house while I was home alone in the afternoon. Oh boy, but let a rabbit run across the yard and he is a fierce, fierce dog. I sleep better knowing no bunnies will be able to break the window and hop off with our surround sound.
This story is quite comical to me now. We even laughed that night thinking that Joey has turned into “that guy” who yells at the teenagers to “get off my lawn”! I can now picture him in pants pulled up to his ribs with a cane chasing kids off his grass in his old age. But there was a point in the evening, where no kidding aside…I was very upset and scared. It truly is one of my biggest fears in life that someone would be in my home at night…or do something to my child. Hearing strange voices right outside of your window sounding like they are attempting to climb on your roof is unsettling to say the least. As soon as we came back inside and were getting ready for bed I noticed that my jaw was killing me, I had a terrible headache and I felt sick to my stomach. All the proof I need that stress is indeed my enemy as far as pain management goes. (For weeks I had been feeling much better.)
The other part of me, besides being really scared…was really mad. The one kid that was still in the tree when the others fled from my husband’s booming voice, looked to be all of 12 years old. What in the world were those kids doing just hanging out, walking the streets at night? I realize that when we were kids there was a lot more freedom to roam the neighborhood, but everyone I knew still had to be home by the time the street lights went on. Not only was I angered that these kids were allowed to scare me in my own home by their silly antics…but I was angered at the danger their parents are putting them in. We live in a military community and a lot of people here own guns. Now, this is not an attempt to get into a debate about gun control, so please don’t even begin that conversation with me…it is not the point of this. The fact is, people have them and feel the right to protect their property. And a lot of wives learn how to use a gun when their Marine is deployed…which around here is more often than not these days. The night could have gone very differently if someone had thought those kids were actually breaking into a home and used a gun to defend their family. The kids were young and I don’t care if they were in a group of 4…there are crazy people out there who will harm children, it happens every single day. And screwing around in someone else’s yard, chasing your friend up a tree may not be harmful…but if that kid had fallen and broken his neck…the parents could have sued the pants off the retired couple that own our home. I hope that my husband yelling at them and the hopeful visit from the Sheriff served to do the kids a favor that night…scare them now…instead of when they are spending their first night in jail for breaking into a house on a dare. Or worse yet scaring some sense into their parents after they have been seriously hurt, or killed.
There was not much sleeping on my part that night. Every crick, creek or imaginary sound the house made was amplified by 1000 and I just couldn’t get over the anger towards the parents of those kids. I really will never understand why those kids were out after dark and not at home in bed or spending hours in front of a computer or video game system. I doubt they will ever be messing around in our yard again, but if they ever do…this time I will be prepared. We bought a new phone that hangs on the wall, I am practicing my front yard lecture and have new pencils and paper for sentence writing. Write this one parents “I will know where my kids are at night…and it will not be in my neighbor ladies tree.” Now, 499 more times please…
Many Kind Regards…
Erin
Posted by Erin at 4/3/2009 8:13 PM 
Categories: Humor
Tags: Parents Motherhood Morgan Joey Dexter the Wonder Dog Kids
Categories: Humor
Tags: Parents Motherhood Morgan Joey Dexter the Wonder Dog Kids
I would be upset too. But I bet the boys almost peed themselves when they heard your hubby's Gunny voice. I remember that voice all too well when I was married to a Marine. hehe
Reply to this