The Katie Chronicles: Neighborhood Explorers Edition, Guest Starring Ethan

Well, it was a rough evening in Kidville. After we got home for the evening, Ethan and Katie were playing outside and joined up with some neighborhood kids that they hang out with a lot. It began to get dark and time for dinner when one of the neighborhood parents came to ask if her kids were in our house. I knew Jerome was outside calling the kids in but apparently he and the parents of the two other kids were all roaming the neighborhood, searching for missing offspring. We figured out quickly that they must all be together but they weren’t answering parents’ calls, which is a no no. (Our kids have free range of a two or three block area, including a playground and some woods, but they can’t go outside the range of our voices, including inside someone’s house, without letting us know.) When I heard Rome’s car start up, I knew we’d gone to Def Con 2. A few minutes later, I heard Rome’s car pull back in the garage, the door open, and sniffling everywhere as the kids came in. Rome’s spidey sense had told him that they had gone to their favorite babysitter, Alex’s, house. She lives about 300 yards away as the crow flies but several blocks away by normal navigation, and a couple of blocks outside their allowed range. He had found all the kids there, happily playing with rocks. (What did Alex’s parents think when a pack of neighborhood kids showed up and asked for their daughter?) Rome apparently gave them The Talk to End All Talks in the car on the way home, perhaps at a volume a teeny bit above normal, because they came in, sat on the couch, and cried. Rome started in with part two of The Talk to End All Talks, also known as “And Another Thing…” but Ethan saved him the trouble by tearfully providing a rundown of all the things they’d done wrong and what he’d done wrong as the oldest in the group of kids. Dinner was a sober affair, with lots of “yes m’ams” and “no, sirs.” Ethan said the grace and he even threw in a note of thanks to God “for our kind parents” and asked for help following the rules. We always discuss our favorite parts of everyone’s day at dinner and Ethan’s favorite part was “learning his lesson.” (Perhaps a career in the ministry is in his future? He’s got the conscience for it.) Don’t tell anyone that I’m secretly glad I have kids with enough chutzpah to push the boundaries on occasion – I’m a fan of the “free range kids” philosophy...one of their evening’s adventures had included Katie falling out of a tree she’d climbed – but I’m also a fan of kids not disappearing in the dark, too. So lessons have been learned and good times have returned to Kidville, minus a privilege or two. And how was your evening?