CRIME & PUNISHMENT...

Well, it's the blog post you've all been waiting for...or haven't you heard? This summer has brought us our 26th year of marriage, several birthdays, and oh yeah, a trip to Juvenile Court with our middle child. I'm not posting this to get laughs - ALTHOUGH SOME PARTS OF IT ARE FUNNY- not to ask for sympathy, but just to be a reminder to you and your children, that sometimes GOOD KIDS DO DUMB THINGS. It's also to give you a picture of how the system works around here, in suburban Oklahoma. Because I had no idea, and I want you to know.

It all started back in the end of May, that crazy end of school year time. My son and some friends were having some harmless fun, or so we thought. (I have to add that these boys are active students at their school that get good grades) Actually we were told they were going to play volleyball and we expected them home by midnight to play XBOX all night long. My husband and I conked out around 11 p.m., just as the fun was starting for the boys. They went to the store to pick up a few cans of biscuits. Now I knew they had done something with biscuit dough before, but didn't know what. I figured it was stuck all over some hot girl's windshield. But they had been throwing biscuit dough at cars. They say it makes a cool smacking sound and it sticks really good. Anyway, besides the fact that you should NEVER THROW ANYTHING at a car, they picked the wrong person to throw it at - a college girl with friends. She must've turned around pretty quickly because she tracked them down and came up our street, just as the carload of biscuit throwers exited. After some heated discussion, the girl made several claims about what the biscuit dough had done to her car, and she called the police. The police arrived a little while later, and the boys met them outside our house. For some reason the policeman did not think the parents should be notified, even though all four boys were juveniles. (!) Our son asked him if he should wake his parents and he said, "No, I think we can handle this like adults." Yeah, right. We were not given the chance to see the girl's car, talk to her, or anything. Anyway, we didn't find out about it until the next morning, when all the boys left quietly - not even sticking around for the donuts we had bought them.
So in June we were notified that the girl was pressing charges against all four boys for vandalism. Unfortunately for us, the policeman misfiled it for Traffic Court, so it had to be refiled for Juvenile Court. This put everything back another month. We received several documents in the mail, had to turn in about 10 pages of paperwork, pay $484 for the offense and court fees(our son is paying us back slowly), go to a mandatory counseling session, and finally, see the juvenile court judge. The judge was nice to us and called our son a "KNUCKLEHEAD" which, oddly enough, is the language my husband uses when our kids do something without thinking. The punishment consists of 20 hours of community service (we were told the minimum was 50 hours, so we were happily surprised!) which can be fulfilled by participating in Project Spirit, an all day challenge course. Dad will go with him to that, while I am required to attend 12 hours of Life Skills classes with him. Additionally, he will have an 8p.m. weekday/9p.m. weekend curfew until December, turn in report cards, and call in weekly to the court as they "track" his progress. Restitution will be determined in December, as the judge is not convinced that the biscuit dough did any real damage to the woman's car. I'll be glad when it's all over!!!
So many lessons have been learned and he will be paying for this for quite some time, although we are told it will not go on his permanent record if everything is fulfilled. The prayer that I have prayed and possibly you too, for your own children, has been answered. "Lord, let him get caught if he is doing wrong."