Column: The day two not-so-bright thieves broke into our house

Many years ago, when our son was about 13, our house suffered the oddest break-in by two not-too-bright thieves. It all began when our son sneaked out of school and walked home. Taller Half and I were both at work, so we were totally unaware of our son’s antics, at least for a while.

When he got home, he decided to fix a sandwich and take it out on the back porch to enjoy. Unfortunately, he left the front door unlocked, and while he was out on the back porch, two guys came to the front door and knocked to see if anyone was home. 

When no one answered the door, one of the guys tried the door handle and discovered it was unlocked. Being very quiet, in they went. They began looking around for something to steal. They had found a few things when they heard our son moving around on the back porch, so they quietly rushed up the stairs.

Our son came in and decided to go upstairs and take a nap. When he got to his room, he saw two guys he didn’t know standing there. They rushed out, pushing him aside, and raced out the back door and into the woods. Then our son ran down the stairs and out the front door, calling the police and then calling me to tell me what had happened.

Needless to say, I was home in minutes, grabbing Taller Half’s shotgun and starting to look for those thieves.

Once in the woods, one of the thieves called a cab. When it arrived up the street, they jumped in and escaped. That’s about when the police arrived at the house. They asked me to put down the shotgun and get out of the house. That’s when we told them the thieves were gone. They had run out the back door and into the woods.

Just then the police got a phone call saying the thieves had been caught when the cab had been stopped because the driver was speeding.

We did get all of our stolen stuff back including a box full of wooden nickels. They stole wooden nickels? Did I mention they weren’t very bright thieves? Once arrested, they went to court and had to spend a few months in jail, and they had to pay us restitution (which we never got).

The next day we took our son to school, and he had to spend the rest of the school week in detention. When he came home, he had to wash all the windows in the house and was not allowed to leave the house for the rest of that week.

Taller Half and I recovered rather quickly from all that excitement, but it took our son and our house a bit longer to settle down. As the saying goes, “All’s well that ends well.”

Laura Moore can be emailed at lehmoore1@gmail.com.