The power of cookies

I have a story to share about my children. My friend had an incident last week with her child beating up a bully at school and his resulting suspension. She was devastated about this. I felt that I could relate and that maybe sharing my story might help others. At the time, this was pretty devastating for me and for my children but for today, I am going to present this to you in a slightly dramatic and humorous manner.

Let's start off with...my kids are lazy. They almost never leave home. They are just kind of like, "Well, I could go out and play...or I could stay on this couch."

So imagine my surprise when this went down:

I am walking my kids to the bus one morning and I notice a lady driving around. She is kind of going slow, and looking for something. She stops near me, rolls down her window and says, "Are those your kids?"

"These two? Yes."

"Okay, well I need to talk to you."

So I tell her to wait just a moment and we finish running to the bus, as usual. I come back to her and she says, "Your kids beat up my grandson yesterday."

"What? My kids?" Like, these lazy children who never leave home and don't even know how to make a fist? Not to mention, they are the scrawniest kids at the bus stop. What?

Now I am not a parent who is naïve to my children's shortcomings. I won't list their sins here, but just know that I know they are naughty... but beating up someone - that just feels like an unfounded accusation.

So she opens the car door to where her 3 grandchildren are sitting and they all confirm that this was true. She even explains that her husband saw this happen after school the day before.

Again, I have a personal policy that if there are 2 or more witnesses then there might be some truth behind this. All three kids are nodding at me. I asked for further clarification on exactly what happened, because I am still picturing my children...on the couch.

She explained that on the way home, her grandson fell and my kids started kicking him.

"Kicking him?"

"Yes, kicking him?"

"Like, with their feet?" I am seriously confused and obviously sounding like an idiot at this point.

She told me that she was on the way to the school to report my kids.

Cool. This is about to get real. Not only did my kids do something really bad, but the kid that they beat up is a different race, and currently there are a lot of social tensions right now to where I am very much concerned that I am going to be going to jail or that the news media is going to be at my door asking for a statement concerning the burning cross...

So I go home and wait for the police to call me, or the school...or the SWAT team.

When the school does call, I am informed that my children cannot be suspended because this happened after the bus had dropped them off, but that if they hear of anything else like this at school, they will be... sent to the guillotine... I mean suspended.

So I have to wait all day for them to come home because I was not aware of these activities before they left for school. I am not sure of what to do, either. I am more than devastated. Apparently my kids might be future killers wrapped in innocent looking bodies. I mean, they didn't even mention anything when they came home the day before. "How was your day, guys?"

"Good, mom." Which translates to, "Don't look in the trunk of the car, mom. We'll take care of that later."

So after they get home, we have "a conversation" where I cry from the other side of the prison glass and they tell me how sorry they are, essentially. We decide to write an apology letter to the victim and to take them all some cookies. You know, "I'm sorry I beat you up. Have a cookie!"

So we approach their door. We are all scared to death. The grandmother opens the door, and I immediately put out the plate of cookies because I feel like it is harder to justify punching someone who has a plate of cookies.

She actually invites us in and we apologize to the kiddo in person. The grandmother then pulls out a lot of Jehovah's Witness materials and explains to me that our family could really use the services that are offered at her church. They have classes for parents and for children. I graciously accept these pamphlets and purposely neglect to tell her what religion we are because, obviously, we don't practice it at my house.

We walked out the door and for the next 6 months I was still concerned that there would be some legal action filed against us because of this. Ironically, my son and the little boy whom he beat up are now really good friends. There is even a picture of them with their arms around each other in their elementary yearbook. So maybe the lesson here is, no matter how innocent your kids look, they are likely guilty, and cookies really do fix a lot of problems.