Never A Dull moment - Especially with 911 available to Everyone with a great imagination!

I cannot begin to describe the feeling of unreality - coming out of a 10 minute trip into the grocery store and finding not ONE, but TWO police cars blocking my van into it's parking space!!!!

Bob had gone to put the cart away, I assumed somebody somewhere was getting a ticket and hopped in the passengers door.  
Officer Friendly walked right up to the Drivers side window, so I leaned across, rolled it down and tried to sound normal as I said hello.  

The Officer craned his head around, glancing past the empty drivers seat to the pile of children who were gratefully sitting, still buckled, looking from him, to the movie playing on the small tv screen.  

He looked chagrined for a moment and then asked if we had anybody in chains.  I was sure I had not heard quite right.  "Excuse me???" I said.  Then I swiveled around again and said "Kids, this nice officer wants to see all of your hands so he can know none of you are in chains.  The kids, intent on a fun part of the movie slowly raised their hands in to the air - the sheer  ridiculousness of the command lost on their tv watching brains.  

I looked back to the officer,  partly curious, and partly upset.  "She if 15", I said pointing to our oldest daughter - sitting just behind me.  "We left her in charge for ten minutes to go get chips and ice cream.  We left the van running, a/c on, AND a movie"  Did we do something wrong????"

Officer friendly looked again at the happy well behaved children and shook his head slowly.  He said "We had a report of a vanload of abandoned children - the caller told us one child put their hand out the window and it was in chains."

I had a hard time even imagining the 911 call.  "Hurry, there's this HUGE white van in the store parking lot....  It is packed FULL of children and they are all in CHAINS!!!!!!!"

Just as I was about to get testy, thinking about how nice it is to live in a much smaller town than the one we were visiting - a town where people are not so quick to point a very strange accusatory finger..... I happened to look on the floor by my 8 year old's feet.  

There they were....  The plastic handcuffs from the dollar store....  Purchased just yesterday - one pair for each of the 4 younger boys...... Good for cops and robbers, good for nerf wars, and apparently good for making people think we are smuggling children across the boarder? 

I picked them up, dangled them in front of the officer and said "I think I may have figured it out".  He began to chuckle, apologized and got ready to go on his way.  All I could do was laugh and tell him that Bob and I had WON!  We had been given the BEST parenting story EVER!!!!! 

Word to the wise.....  Maybe a conversation with children about what NOT to dangle out the window of a 15 passenger van......  Of course then you will never get an AWESOME story like this one!!!!!