Caught

Caught

“Call the police!” James whispered, as he ran out onto the deck where his mother was weeding the flower boxes.

His mother tried not to smile, he was so serious. “Oh dear! What has happened?” she whispered back, with as much drama as she could muster.

“There are thieves in the living room stealing our things!”

“How do you know?” Mother said, determined to get into the game. She knew he got lonely now that his brother had started school five days a week.

“I saw them! I was just coming down the stairs when they opened the window. I heard the noise and was a little scared, so I peeked around the edge to see, and they didn’t see me.”

“How do you know they’re thieves?” Mom asked, happy that he was really getting excited about something again.

“They think we’re not home! I heard one of them say, ‘Hurry up, she probably took the kids to school!’ Then when they turned away I snuck out!”

Suddenly Mom got a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. James had never been quite this good at his imaginary stories before... “How many of them are there?” she asked quietly.

“Just two, a tall one and a short one, but they are both very big,” he whispered.

Realizing her car was in the shop, so there was no car in the garage, she took her phone out of her pocket and dialed the police as she quietly carried James down the steps and over to the next-door neighbor’s house.

James got his name in the paper as the youngest hero to ever catch thieves in action!

He rode that victory for eighty-two years, much to the chagrin of many of his friends, and most of his relatives ...