The title pretty much says it all.
My thankful thing today is that last night no one went to jail. I’m talking about my sons.
My boys (three teens, all boy) played a harmless prank on me last night at the gas station. Harmless, but only because I knew it was them, and played along. And to be fair, they arrived with too much speed and a drift into the parking lot, but no one else was around.
The prank was when they backed up to my van and rocked it with their car. My van already got totaled 2 weeks ago when someone sideswiped Adam, so it ain’t no beauty pageant winner right now. Nothing was going to mess up, so I pretended I was asleep, much to their delight.
I could hear them roaring with laughter, and I did my best to keep a straight face, with mouth agape, which added to their mirth.
I didn’t know they’d keep it up for a good five minutes, but it wasn’t hard to play along with them. At some point I wondered if they’d just rock me all night, and if I’d actually fall asleep, but this wasn’t like a cradle rocking, so I doubt it.
Once they finally got tired of the fun, they pulled up beside me and we chatted and laughed about their night, since I had come to pick up two boys, and Austin would head home.
AdThat was the plan.
Please refer to the title now.
Yeah.
You guessed it.
👮♀️
“Uh, is that a police officer? And a tow truck?”
“Sir…I can explain…”
Oh, Boy! I could totally see how this looked from everyone but us, hence the cops. I was so embarrassed and not a little bit scared. 
They took my license and my son’s. I told my story to the constable, who soberly asked me to repeat it to the public safety officer, both really big and burly guys. They then took Austin’s story.
Yes, our stories matched! 😂
The officers did not laugh, and our fun suddenly looked really stupid. Considering they they had three counties worth of officers dispatched to come deal with this wild guy ramming another vehicle, they looked at it differently. Understandable.
Much subdued, we all listened gratefully to the counsel of these kind officers. Once they realized they didn’t have to de-escalate some out of control drunk person, they actually said they were relieved to find just us. We may be kind of rednecks, but we are mostly harmless. Nothing went wrong, but it could have.
These officers have seen much. Their words? “We were young once too. Have your fun, but do your stupid stuff at home. A lot could have happened here, and one thing gone wrong, we’d have been hauling you off to jail.”
The boys listened. Like I said, they were being stupid, but they aren’t stupid kids. Just kids who didn’t think past step one or two. 
Hearing the sober stories of other stupid pranks the officers have seen that have resulted in arrests or serious harm, did get everyone’s attention.
We ended up talking for half an hour with these guys, and made some new friends. We apologized to the gas station attendees for alarming them, and humbly vowed to do better. No one was arrested.
We shook hands with these two officers, and they left the boys with these parting words,
Remember–have your fun, but keep it at home. If you want to go drive fast and do donuts,we know a dirt road near here with no one around. If we catch you, we’ll still take you in, so make sure no one’s close by. If you want to drive real fast, go to the Bristol Motor Speedway, and they’ll let you race around for $6.
Y’all don’t look like bad kids–just don’t be stupid.
And finally…
Listen to your mom. Chances are, if she’s telling you something, it’s for your own good. You’d be smart to listen. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
“Come on boys! Put my bumper back on, and let’s head home!”
