Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do?

I went for a run yesterday and when I passed by the woods where T1's fort was, I was met by T1 and a little girl and boy that live on our street. They were all dirty and excited! The little girl had some nasty animal bone sticking out of her jeans pocket; the boys were telling me about the various graves (a.k.a mounds of dirt) they had found; and they were all raving about the magic grass that was healing all of their scrapes. After crawling out of the woods to continue my run (and involuntarily taking some poison ivy with me -- yikes!), I passed our pastor and his wife riding their bikes on the sidewalk and had a passing thought about how nice it is that children are playing outside and using their imaginations, and how it's comforting to know that people from church are also out and about in the neighborhood. How peaceful.

Fast forward to today. T1 and his friend decided to jazz up their fort using materials they found in a nearby dumpster. The dumpster is one of those big green temporary dumpsters used at construction sites, so it has lots of junk in it. The kids thought they had found a gold mine! They saw curtains in the dumpster and were going to use them on their fort. Just as T1's friend had scaled the side of the dumpster and jumped in, a police car pulled up and two officers got out and started to walk over to T1 and his friend. The friend started climbing out of the dumpster, and I guess it looked like he was getting ready to flee, so one of the officers got on the loud speaker and yelled "Don't run!". T1 said he's never been so scared in his life. When asked what they were doing, the kids explained they had built a fort and were fixing it up. The officers ended up being decent to the kids, but warned them to stay out of the dumpster from now on. After the police officers went on their way, T1 and his friends ran back to the fort to quickly dispose of the beer bottles they had found and were playing with so the police wouldn't come back and think they were theirs. If only the pastor and his wife had passed by today...