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Updated 4 hours ago
As my wife calmly explained the situation to the 911 operator, I couldn't help but think that in some small way, I might be failing as a parent.
If you are a regular reader of this column, you might recall that we like to pull pranks in my house — a lot. It's something I encourage as I feel people often take themselves too seriously.
So here's how it went down.
My older son filled up a glass with his favorite drink, Marburger's Raspberry Iced Tea, took a sip, sat it on the night stand in his room, then went to take a shower following wrestling practice. My younger son was hiding and waiting to exact revenge for being tormented one day earlier for fake spiders carefully placed in the toilet paper roll. He waited until he heard water running in the shower, then went into his big brother's room and emptied a tube of toothpaste into the cup of iced tea and gave it a good stir. Then he came downstairs to watch TV and acted like an angel.
The situation ignited when older son returned to his bedroom, fully expecting to be rewarded with the refreshing, sweetness of Marburger's finest, but instead gulped a heaping helping of Aquafresh Extra Whitening. As older son began to thunder down the stairs shouting, “You're dead meat, you little runt,” younger son went into self-preservation mode and raced to the bathroom to seek refuge, locking the door.
Truth be told, until this point, it was nothing all too out of the ordinary. Just another weeknight in the McElhinny household.
As older son banged on the door threatening bodily harm to his sibling, this is where the situation got away from us. Unbeknownst to any of us, younger son was armed with a cell phone and enacted what they were learning in school. In an emergency, call 911. So he did.
Now, the 911 operator on the other end got an earful of banging on the bathroom door, threats of violence and shouting parents. Finally, calmer heads prevailed, older son laughed about what he called “a pretty good prank” and went upstairs. Younger son emerged from the sanctuary of the powder room and all was back to normal.
Until … the 911 operator called back. This is when my wife was blindsided with questions about safety in the home and if a police unit needed to be dispatched to evaluate the carnage. She assured 911 that nobody was in peril except a young boy who was about to be grounded for making the call.
After the smoke cleared and both kids were read the riot act for taking it too far, everybody went to their rooms. My wife then looked at me in a moment of solidarity. We acted as a unit, and she knew she could depend on me to grasp the gravity of the situation. So I decided the time was not right to share that it was actually me who hid the spiders in the toilet paper. I saw no advantage to owning up to that.
Still flustered by the rogue 911 call, she looked at me very seriously and said, “I can't believe he would do something so foolish!”
I told her I agreed and that I was very mad, too. After all, that Aquafresh is like four bucks a tube.
I don't really mind sleeping on the couch anymore.
Dave McElhinny is the North Bureau Chief for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached at dmcelhinny@tribweb.com.
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