Midnight Activities

“Jane? We need you out here.” Brian says as he pokes his head into my RV. “There’s been an incident…”
An incident. It’s not 1:00 am yet, so I know my kids are not violating Creationfest’s light and sound curfew. Everyone is still up celebrating David’s birthday. Mark is not even in this country, so I know he can’t be doing a burnout in anyone’s driveway. We have no electricity here, so there’s no way that Clint or Max has suggested we watch an inappropriate video. Schools out, so this is not a carpooling issue…

I was preparing for ‘lights out’ by getting everyone’s bedding sorted. In addition to myself, I have 6 boys along for the annual mid-summer bake/burn retreat at the Gorge in George: Creationfest ’04. We’ve been camping with 6 other families and loving it.

“What’s the matter?” I ask as I step down.
“Well, I had three leftover sparklers (from the birthday brownies we ate earlier) so I gave them to the boys…”
“Y e a h   and?”
“I thought they would just play with them here in the campsite, you know. But, they took them out (onto the narrow patch of green space between sites) and a security guy apprehended them…”Sure enough, there at the back of my RV, on the grassy “roadway” is an official looking car, a quad, and a number of representatives from the security division of Creationfest.
“We’re taking them in, m’am” one of them says to me as he pushes Max into the backseat. Clark is already seated next to him.
“Taking them where?”
“To see the deputy. Over at admin. This is a serious matter. He needs to decide how we will proceed from here.”
He starts to drive away.
“Wait!” I run up beside the car and poke my head in the open window.. “Where are you going? How can I get my boys back?”
“That’ll be for the deputy to decide. He’s at the building to the right of the main entrance. There’s a good chance he’ll insist you all leave the festival tonight. These boys are in direct violation. They will be held responsible. We don’t take situations like this lightly.”
And off they drove. The convoy of law enforcement officials and my boys.

How lucky am I? To be born at this time in history, and in this place?

When my grandma had Officials take her husband away in the middle of the night on some equally ridiculous trumped up charges, she had no options. There was no “wait! Where are you taking him?” opportunity.  She couldn’t say to her kids, I’ll be back soon, get ready for bed…and then go with a neighbour, who prayed along the way, to straighten out an obvious misunderstanding. There were no kind, helpful, cute men in authority who felt sheepish about barging in and misinterpreting an innocent birthday celebration.

Her midnight adrenaline rush did not end with a laugh.
Mine did.
Thank you God.