When I was little my brother and I were in a time out.. we were trouble makers.. maybe nothing has changed
Anyway, we were sitting by the phone and my brother convinced me to call 911.. I was young, maybe 4 or 5, so I didn't fully understand what this 911 was all about. I knew you called it if you were in trouble, and well I was in trouble for something I had done.. maybe the wrong kind of trouble though.
The woman kept asking me questions and I kept giving her little kid smart ass remarks, then my brother grabbed the phone and said Shut up lady! And hung up.
Well we got a call back and my Mom answered the phone, talked in a very hushed tone and then hung up. She told us there was bad news, we had committed one of the most serious crimes by pranking the police and now we had to go to jail. They were going to donate all our toys to kids that needed them since we couldn't bring them with us, and there were no video games there or recess. We cried, and cried. We cried some more. Then we got a phone call from the police chief and he talked to us very sternly about how serious this all was. He said JUST this time he would let us off the hook, but they would be watching us for years to come.
My Mom passed away when I was 9, but she kept a journal about our childhood in our memory boxes, or whatever you want to call them, where all our childhood memories were stored. I was leafing through it when I happened across a page talking about that day. She mentioned how the first call back was the police, they explained what happened and my Mom explained her end, she told them she would discipline us for it. So instead of more time outs or spankings or what have you, she got our Uncle to phone back pretending to be the police chief and give us a hard time. I tell you that was the most effective form of punishment she could have brought down on us and it had us walking straight for years afterward. I found this journal just 3 or 4 years ago, when I was 25, and had believed for 2 decades that the police chief was watching me.