You may think we here in Sketchydom come across as just a nice, normal family. …or at least I hope we do. But little do you know the veritable lawlessness that really reigns here. Shall I draw back the curtains that mask the deep secrets that lie behind our covers of civilized respectability?
Last night at approximately 7:00 pm EST, Tom decided that tonight was the night he needed to install a DVD burner we bought, oh 4 months ago. So he sent the wiggly and slightly hyper children out of the family room and upstairs to the boys room to play, so that he can have a little peace and quiet to concentrate on his computerizing.
Our boys room is the largest bedroom in the house and doubles as the playroom, also the guest room, but that’s a story for another day. Pertinent facts here are: boys room/playroom.
Also it gets hot up there. So we routinely have the windows open to let in a breeze. It also gets cold up there in the winter; I guess the air circulation in our house is not very good. We keep a heater up there in the winter, but again not relevant to this particular story.
To recap: hyper children, bedroom/playroom, open windows.
With me so far?
Oh and an exercise ball. The exercise ball definitely comes in to play.
Four wiggly and slightly hyper children run upstairs taking an exercise ball up with them to play with. Much squealing, laughter and yelling ensue as they pass the ball back and forth. Ball being knocked about…at one point I thought about telling them to settle down, but then I thought, “Oh let them play, Brooke and Jon have to come down and do dishes soon enough anyway.” Apparently a mistake of judgment, as it turns out, I freely admit.
So then, approximately 7:30 pm EST, I call Jon and Brooke down to do their dishes, put Alex in the tub and Grant rejoins Tom downstairs and is watching a TV show, if I recall correctly about the Finger towers in Tibet and the mystery surrounding why they were built in the first place. And I go back in my room to continue reading a book. Yes, I know you are all jealous of the raucous time we have around here.
At approximately 7:50 pm EST, there is a knock at the door. “How odd” I think, “I wonder who that could be.”
I open the door and find there are two police officers, holding their heavy Maglite flashlights, seemingly to read their notes off of a notebook, but in a way that could very easily be turned into a cudgel, just incase there should be a cudgeling need.
“Are you OK?”
“ummm, yes…”
At this point I am wondering, could there possibly be a rabid ax murder who was involved in a high speed chase, who coming to a heavily armed blockade, chose to abandon his (or her, don’t call me sexist) car, and was trying to escape on foot and was running through my neighborhood and the police thought the best chance of catching him (or her) was by going door to door through out the neighborhood.
You see how clueless I was to their real intent…or you will soon see.
“We had a report of a loud disturbance and a possible female being assaulted at this address.”
“Whaaat???”
“Is this __abcd address, which really was my address, but I’m not about to post that on my blog, so I’m replacing it with this random babbling__”
“Yes, but…” I’m thinking how more Beaver Cleaver Family can we seem at this point with 2 kids doing the dishes, 1 in the tub, me reading and Dad and little junior watching TV downstairs…
“Are you the only female in the house?” Am I allowed to be slightly annoyed at the over use of the word female here? I'm sure they are just trying to be exact, but really.
“No my daughter is here too….Brooke???”
At which point Brooke comes bopping out of the kitchen, expecting perhaps someone for church or a friend, and stops stunned at the sight of the police at the door.
They explain why they are here, and ask her if she is OK. Which she seems just as bewildered as me.
She actually clued in a little before me, that they were indeed playing upstairs and being rather loud, and playing with a ball…and launches into a story interspersed with “I’m so sorry.” And “I didn’t know anyone would be worried about me.” And “I’m SOOOO sorry.” And an offer to run upstairs and shout out the window, “I’m OK!!!”
Which the police were quick to assure her was not necessary.
Somewhere in the middle of this the second officer went down the steps, to his car I assumed, but apparently, he checked out the scene of the “crime” because as he came back, the first officer and I were just getting to the point of “who else is in the house” and “Can we speak to your husband?”
I started to call him, and the second officer said, “Oh, it's all right. He’s just down on the computer, he’s completely oblivious, he doesn’t know anything is going on.” Which I must say, was completely true. Not only did neither he or Grant notice a police officer peeking in the windows at them, Tom didn’t even know any of this had happened until I came downstairs after they left and told him about it. Completely absorbed in his computerizing.
I’m pretty sure that by this point Brooke had convinced them with her obvious embarrassed confusion and general innocent adorableness that there was not a problem here…perhaps my obvious bewilderment, too. But I think she really pushed their belief over the edge. Maybe she deserves a little bonus in her allowance this week…
Because at this point, they just got my name and birth date, and Tom’s and left, seemingly much more relaxed than they were upon arriving. I suppose they wanted to check it against any past police reports, just to verify that we were indeed as innocent as we appeared and not just really good actors.
Which left me with Brooke, still embarrassed and repeating how she was so very, very sorry. And me to reassure her, that “it’s OK.” And “You couldn’t know.” And “It’s OK.” And “you were just playing.” And “Isn’t it better to know that Heaven forbid that we were ever in a circumstance where something like that was happening to either one of us, that our neighbors would call the police instead of just saying I don’t want to get involved or seem overbearingly busy-body-ish?”
And to contemplate just how one reassures one's neighbors that one is not being abused nor abusing one's children.
And to run upstairs and close the windows.
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