And now for the rest of the story...My coworker lives in the neighboring town out in the middle of nowhere, had mentioned they never get TP'd and her kids would love it. So we set up a little 'signal' whereby I would call and let it ring twice and hang up. She would give us 10 or 15 minutes and then come out for the bust. This was way funny because they have a long driveway, and after we dropped the kids off at the end with their arms full, we backed halfway up the driveway and parked. Our lights were off, but we were so visible. The kids never even questioned it. We knew we were going to be 'caught' but they didn't.
After about ten minutes, Madolyn came to the van and said she needed to potty. We told her to squat in front of the van in the shadow...and about that time, "Kathy" comes out with guns blazin'...well, maybe not guns, but we could hear her yelling. Too bad for Madolyn!! Ha. Funny thing, the boys kept doing their business with the TP for a couple minutes before returning to the van. As we were chatting with "Kathy" her girls finally made their way outside to scare us...ha. Little late ;)
Our last and final stop, much to the dismay of our posse, was perhaps the funniest. We literally pull up into this driveway and park right up by the house, which made us laugh...we're so sneaky. Again, with the light fiasco, which had been causing us fits all night, continued. More laughing. I was thinking it was the operator, but was told by another van owner, there is just no good way to turn off the lights without first turning them on or something. I'll give "Beth" a break on that one.
The clan retreats to do their business. (Oh yeah, our smallest warrior fell asleep a few houses back and was sawing logs in her car seat at this point.) The kids decorate the trees, run around crazy-like, come back for more TP, etc. The kids kept coming over to the van to tell us stuff, which we can't even remember except that the comments made us laugh. Near the end, the oldest of the boys comes to us and asks if we can turn the van around to shine the lights on another part of the yard. TOO FUNNY. That made Beth and I giggle even more because these kids were cracking us up, they were such chickens and didn't realize we shouldn't actually be shining lights anywhere!
One of our mighty soldiers came right from football practice, and while the others were decked out in dark clothing, this poor guy was white, head-to-toe. I called him the "white knight" and it was funny to see him streak across a yard as bright white as the TP he carried. As we loaded up to head out, there was something unidentified on a football cleat that we had to bag up with the plastic toilet paper wrapper. I am told it had to be removed with a wire brush. That is just one of the risks you take when you venture out to TP.
It was a fun night. We were exhausted. When we got home, both our houses had been TP'd by our first victims and my kids were thrilled. And I got home just in time to watch the amazing win by the St. Louis Cardinals...which made it an even better night. Some may think TP'ing is wrong, but I feel like it's pretty harmless. As long as we're not tearing up anything or damaging something, it's all in good fun. (Maybe I'm just justifying it for myself because I love it so much...what am I going to do when my kids are too old for mom and dad to take them?)
My mom came over the next morning and taught my kids how to burn the TP out of the trees for an easy clean-up. See it's harmless, all you need are matches, a blow-torch or a lighter, some TP and some green landscape and it's gone. Oh yes, now that is some good family fun.
1 comment:
Loved it!
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