This is the hard part of parenting.
After dinner, stuffed with catfish, burgers, steak, & hot dogs, we made a trip to the local supermarket for some essentials & to pick up a few other items at the candy section. My youngest, Daniel, has a severe weakness for candy. He could live on candy. He has visions of sugarplums in his head every night...not just the night before Christmas.
We were picking through a heaping mound of loose "trial sized" candy bars for a project & kept fending off requests from both kids for candy.
The boys have had more candy over the past week than they've had in weeks. And Mommy had decided they had "candied enough". We got what we needed & checked out, then headed for home.We drove the 15 miles back to our house, turned into our development, & my wife realized she'd not heard a peep from Daniel. She was afraid he had fallen asleep on the ride home, like he's done in so many prior trips to town. She looks back in her rear-view mirror & asks if Daniel's okay...if he's awake. We hear a feeble, "yes. ...~sniff!~" Mommy asks what was wrong & was answered by a "You're gonna get mad at meeeeeeee!" that was splurted out by our little 2nd Grader.
So here we are 1/2 mile from our house wondering what the meltdown was about. Caving in from guilt, Daniel fessed up he had eaten candy he had lifted from that tempting mound at the supermarket. My wife looked as if she had heard him confess to an armed robbery. She stopped the car dead in the road, looked back at the criminal, & asked, "You, what??"
Daniel's older brother, Cameron, & I were then deposited onto our driveway when we arrived at our house whereupon "Sheriff Mommy, The Bounty Hunter" promptly put the "patrol car" in reverse to return the 7-year old felon back to the store to face the music. I last saw this trembling offender, looking pale as a sheet, saying over & over, "IDon'tWannaGoToJail, IDon'tWannaGoToJail, IDon'tWannaGoToJail!!" Sheriff Mommy had a twinkle in her eye as she drove off.
Meanwhile, as I walked upstairs with Cameron, he was appearing more & more anxious & finally asked, "Is Daniel going to 'juvie'?" I responded, "I don't know, Cameron. We've never had any of our kids do something like this." We got inside the house & he went straight to his room, buried his head in his comforter, & squawlled like a little girl.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Mommy on her way back to the supermarket, kept hearing her prisoner say, "IDon'tWannaGoToJail, IDon'tWannaGoToJail!" & the closer to the store they got, the more he began to make sounds like he was hyperventilating. At one point, he asked, "Am I going to have to go before The Judge?" Mommy couldn't say. He would just have to find out. Then the guilty robber began blubbering, "I can't do this, I can't do this, Mommy!" He was told, he should've thought of this before he kifed the candy.
Once at the store, Daniel was marched in & a manager was located. The culprit was taken to a back room. Sheriff Mommy made him spill the beans...er, I mean candy...to the store manager. Daniel bawled that he "couldn't help it because I like candy!!!!!" The manager, who was totally wonderful through the interrogation, explained to Daniel how that when items are stolen from a store, ultimately others must pay the price of this because the store has to raise the prices of their items to pay for the stolen ones. And this hurts their customers who don't have a lot of money to buy food. He was also told that the store has cameras that can see what goes on ...and others who have stolen items have been taken out in handcuffs.
After a near-death experience with The Law, Sheriff Mommy paid his bail (a total of 15 cents for the "hot" candy) & Daniel was let off with a warning.
When they arrived home, Cameron heard the garage door go up & he made a bee-line from his bedroom all the way across the house to the basement door (without even looking in the direction of his dad, who was standing only 9 feet away). He got to Sheriff Mommy's patrol car & swayed his head back & forth, trying to look for his brother, the outlaw. They were reunited & both learned a huge lesson.
As I tucked our paroled thief into bed & had him say his prayers, I asked if he was happy to go to sleep in his bed instead of the one at the jail. I got an emphatic "yes". I'm pretty sure, this will be a brush with the law that he will not soon forget.
And neither will Mommy or Daddy.
Or big brother, Cameron.
However, if it were I who was the arresting officer in this situation, I would've made a quick side trip to the Centre County Correctional Facility, that sits not more than 4 miles from our house, & tell my suspect in the back seat I may have to go inside to arrange for them to take in a new inmate. But Mommy didn't do that because she's a softie.
