Only In My Neighborhood

I swear I am not making this stuff up.

A little back story:  Rhode is not the most well behaved of children.  He likes to outright refuse to do just about anything he is asked to do.  It only slightly makes me want to pull my hair out.  But we have found a punishment that seems to really do the trick.

When he is being extra ornery, I say something along the lines of, "Rhode I am sorry you don't want to be a helpful part of our family but only helpful people get to live in those house."  I then send him out the front door and shut it.

We have a little courtyard so he isn't actually visible from the street and so far, from my window observings, he just sits on the front step for a while and eventually knocks on the door for reentrance and has almost always found his helpful side.

Well, on this current afternoon, he outright refused to empty the dishwasher.  So, we followed our normal routine.  I had just shut the front door and walked back to my kitchen when there was a knock on my back door.  I turned to find a K9 officer in my backyard with his trusty police dog in tow.

In the few seconds it took my mind to process this, I imagined the conversation that just might be about to take place.

Officer: Excuse me ma'am, do you realize you have a child outside your front door?

Me:  Umm... yes?

Officer:  What kind of irresponsible, horrible, unfit mother kicks their child out of the house because of something as ridiculous as his refusal to do jobs?  You should be ashamed...  I will be taking these children with me now...

I was a touch panicked.  So imagine my next level of panic when, instead, he asked me,
"Did you see someone run through your yard a minute ago?"

"No..."

"Well a guy who was involved in a stabbing last night just ran through those two yard and either ran through your yard or your neighbors.  We caught him on the other side of your wall."

I turned my ashen face to Scarlet and yelled, "Go get your brother, now!"

The officer then continued, "So if you find anything in the yard that doesn't belong to you, you need to let us know."

Okay...

Don't worry there was more.  "Cause there's a chance he dropped the knife that was used."

"Would you mind if we searched your yard for the knife?"

Hmm, who would I rather have search for a bloodied murder weapon in my backyard?  My children or the K9 dog?  Tough one...

The dog found nothing of interest in our backyard.  Instead we just got to be the awesome house with six police cars surrounding us for the next several hours.

Sometimes I fantasize about life in other cities... so much calmer, so much more clothing on people, so much quieter.

But, if we do ever get out of this city, what the heck will I blog about?