The journey of a thousand miles...

It is often said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Never has this been more literal than what I discovered last night. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Last night, I was working on moving furniture around from the front room in my house to the middle room - what was intended to be a dining room. As I moved piles of books from pillar to post, I saw red and blue lights flashing outside. This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon sight on my street as there are several families with questionable control of their kids; usually teenagers who want to be more rowdy than the audience at the last taping of the Jerry Springer Show.

I didn't think that much about it as I continued to move furniture and then I caught a glimpse of two kids outside with their dads and a cop. The kids weren't the usual teenage trash on the street but rather a pair of boys barely in first grade. I was... curious. So I poked my head out of my front door and that's when I saw what an experienced tracker might call a trail of evidence.

The boys were attempting to explain how something (called a can of paint) could have gotten open and 'sort of' spilled at the bottom of my driveway. Their fathers had apparently been mortal enemies for a few months now since the two little boys were notorious for getting each other into tons of trouble. One dad, who kept telling his son that he wasn't going to mess around with him and the paint because his beer was getting warm, said that he and the other dad had already been in a few fights because the kids won't stop hanging around each other.

Apparently the boys had found the can of white paint in or near someone's garbage and decided, at night, to investigate. One of the boys was wearing tennis shoes and the other was barefoot. Do you see where this is going? Two seven year-olds, a can of paint, night, and curiosity. Yep, you guessed it.
Now, while you're laughing and trying to hold it in so that those around you don't begin to question what you're reading let me keep going with the explanation.

Someone had called the police since they saw the boys with the paint. The police showed up and found the boys. Then he got the fathers involved (oh yeah, I can bet that they got their buts whooped) to come down and clean the paint from my driveway. Unfortunately, the hot road had already dried all of their foot prints so it's going to take a while for those to wear off even if we have some good storms.

When you back up and look at it from a distance, you can see the curious patterns the one, barefoot, boy left as he tried to figure out what to do now that he had paint all over his feet.

I couldn't write stuff this funny.

-Tom