On Monday afternoon I was sitting at the table reading when I noticed a teenage boy come up on to the side porch. People come up on our porches all the time to leave fliers for pizza and Thai food delivery. At first glance that's what I thought he was doing. But a glance was all that it took for me to know that this was not the case. This kid was being sneaky. He had obviously learned how to be sneaky by watching cartoons. He was hunched over and creeping up the steps in a way that begged a silly sound track. When he looked at the table where the boys leave their cigarettes and lighters it was obvious what he was doing. Any doubt was erased as he leaned over to look behind the sculpture that sits on the table, and finding nothing, made a mad dash away.
I found this to be almost hysterically funny and not just because of his cartoonish behavior. For months I've been hearing, "Damn it! I can't believe Zach took my cigarettes again!" and, "I only smoked two from that pack, he couldn't have left me at least one?!" Sometimes there is a lot more swearing involved and the guilty party is whoever isn't here at the time. Even people who are only here occasionally have lost packs and lighters. So after our thief darted away, I started laughing out loud. Hamad happened to be home because he'd had to take Papa to the doctor that afternoon and he heard me laughing so he came to investigate. I told him about the sneaky kid.
For some reason, Hamad didn't think this was funny at all. He wanted to know what the kid looked like and, of course, being the terrible eye witness that I am, I could only give him a vague general idea. Now Hamad dashed out the front door and went running down the street looking for a not too skinny kid, who maybe was kind of brown, and was wearing a Wilson High uniform. In a few minutes he was back and more upset than ever. He hadn't found the kid and his cigarettes from the front porch were missing.
This whole episode just keeps getting more amusing for me. Now our evenings are full of the boys sitting at the table brainstorming how to A) kill this kid ("But Helen... he took my Zippo"), B) enslave this kid, C) rat this kid out to his mom, D) booby trap a pack of cigarettes, or E) what messages to write on the cigarettes that he takes. I have done my motherly duty by pointing out that stealing cigarettes should not be a capital offense, and that they don't know that the same kid has been doing it for the whole time. It may be well known that the first guy to walk by our house gets free cigarettes.
Yesterday Zachary lurked around for about two hours trying to catch the kid. Part of his "stake out" was sitting in the back seat of the van peering out at the porch that had the "unguarded" pack of cigarettes on it. Luckily nobody from Wilson High walked by. I say luckily, because I'm not sure Zach really knew what he was going to do if he caught the kid. Zach really wants his Zippo back.
Finally Hamad has a nemesis with a brain larger than a squirrel's. (Although watching him match wits with the squirrel is pretty funny too.)
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