Fire, fear, and a crappy evening

I always compose witty and well-written blog posts in my mind, late at night, as I am falling asleep. Then I wake up, start my long and hectic day, and forget all about that little gem of a post possibility. This happened late last night (or early this morning, depending on how you look at it). And I cannot for the life of me remember the one ingenious line I had lingering in my mind. Quel dommage. What I DO remember is what the post was going to be about. Which is what this post will be about (see title).

Last night we had the *pleasure* to be on the receiving end of a really unnecessary, and immature prank. It seems that while I was watching General Conference yesterday (not to be confused with General Hospital), some little jerks in the neighborhood were watching Billy Madison and getting outdated prank ideas. At approximately 8 pm, there was a HARD knock on the door. It startled all of us. Wes immediately opened the door to find a flaming bag of you guessed it. Poo (I'm really hoping it was dog poo, because the alternatives...we'll stop there). You know—the old "stomp on the flaming bag of crap" trick. Of course Wes knew what this was, and put it out with the hose. Surprisingly, we didn't see who did it. (They must have been FAST.) We decided they jumped over a wall and headed back towards the alley.

Wes wasn't too upset about it. He insists it's just kids playing dumb pranks (and being pretty mean, in my opinion). But the thing that really chaps my hide, is the fact that it legitimately scared little Finn. He was crying about the fact that Dada was outside with the fire. We could all smell the smoke indoors. And he talked about the "bad guys" and the fire all night long. He couldn't stop talking about it. He tailed me like a shadow the rest of the night, not going to bed until we were all in bed with him. I wished so badly that I could just erase those sad, scared thoughts from his mind.

I glared out the front window last night, watching some teens sitting on the curb across the street, smoking. They kept flicking their lighters in the dark. The mothering instinct in me had visions of marching across the street, yelling at them for scaring my son and daring to burn anything (even in jest) in California. But they might not have been the culprits at all. As unfair as it is for me to judge them, I still couldn't shake it.

As we opened the front door this afternoon, the first thing Finn did was check the spot where Wes tried to wash away all of the ashes from the burned bag. Finn kept asking if I hate those bad guys. I told him it's never good to hate anything. But really super strongly dislike? Um, yeah!!