Oliver Twist Bright

Once a month the Sisters attend a meeting of our local chapter of Romance Writers of America.  It’s great fun and we’ve learned so much about the craft of writing and getting agents and talking to editors.  We love these meetings and look forward to them with great anticipation.  It’s the only time I get to be something other than an employee, a wife or someone’s mom. 

This month my cell phone kept ringing like crazy.  It was on vibrate and I ignored the calls from my mom and dad, but when the first call came from home I answered it. My Honey wouldn’t bother me unless it was important.

I excused myself from the meeting and answered the phone in the hallway. It was Sassy.

“When are you coming home?” she asked, whining.

“Later, why?” There was nothing gentle in my tone. 

“Daddy’s being mean and yelling at us,” she told me.

“I’m certain there is a good reason.  What did you do?” I asked her, anxious to get back.

“He says we’re screwing around and not doing our chores.”

I tell her very sternly that I’ll be home in a couple of hours and she needs to listen to her father.

God help me, but the phone rang again about an hour later.  This time it came from My Honey’s cell phone. I don’t know what possessed me, but I answered it again.

This time it was The Bandit and I had a very similar conversation with him.

Call number three – again from the cell phone – and I answered it fully planning to verbally slay the person on the other end. 

It was Sassy. “When are you coming home?  We miss you and we’re worried about you.”

I didn’t believe this crap even for a minute. “Trust me, you don’t want me to come home right now.”

“Oh, we do, Mommy, we do.”

I told her I’d be home in a matter of minutes and they would be sorry.

When I burst through the front door and threw my stuff on the table, I found My Honey, sitting in his chair and nonchalantly playing video games.  The children were nowhere to be seen.

“Why did you let the kids call me three times today?” I demanded, hands on hips, eyes narrowed in fury.

“What?” He genuinely looked confused. “I didn’t call you today.”

“Well the kids did,” I insisted, “from the house phone and twice from your cell phone.”

“I’ve had my cell phone in my pocket all day,” he swore like the ex-Boy Scout he is and patted a pocket of his cargo shorts. Suddenly, his face showed an epiphany. “Oh… wait.  That explains all the hugging.”

“Are you trying to tell me our children pick-pocketed you for your cell phone?” I say this with a great deal of you’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me evident in my voice.

“Yeah, I am.” My Honey is dead serious. As his luck would have it, Sassy wandered in at that very moment.  When her father confronted her with the charges against her, she did her absolute best to lie but she really sucks at it.

I honestly can’t believe my children even knew how to pickpocket. Sassy tried to lay it on her brother and that I can believe.  I’m certain she came up with the idea and her brother knew how to implement it.  That still doesn’t explain how they knew my cell phone number to call from the house phone. 

There had always been those rumors of pickpocket schools in places like Brazil or somewhere, but I didn’t think they’d opened a satellite campus at the private school my kids attend.  I have no idea when they have the time to practice either, but they’re clearly pretty good at it.  It’s very sad that now their displays of love are completely suspect.

So now, if you stop by my house and my children run to hug you and show a great deal of affection, I would check your wallet if I was you.