The first thing I would like to do is thank you all so much for your kind words and prayers when my son went missing for over seven hours the other day. The love and support my wife and I felt was very overwhelming! It just goes to show that Sleeplessdad.com and TheDailyGoodieBag.com have the best fans in the world!
I guess from this point all that is left is to tell the whole story as told by my son and his grandmother. Supposedly at 3pm on August 9th, my son told his Grandmother that he was going to walk his friend (who happened to be a girl) home. She only lives a block or so from the house so she told him it was fine. The two kids then took off to get her home when ( and this is where it get sketchy) a group of kids began to chase them. According to my son, these kids not only chased them out of the neighborhood, but down a main road and a side road. I grew up in that area so I think it is safe to say that if they were where they claim then they ran about 4-5 miles before they stopped. He claims that at that point they got lost on the way back home. A little over seven hours into their journey they were picked up at the entrance of the neighborhood by a police cruiser and each brought home.
Now, taking a step back and looking at the situation as well as who is involved really made me think. For starters, my 14 year old has never told the truth a day in his entire life. I know you might be thinking maybe that is an exaggeration. Trust me, it is a sad and unfortunate truth. I have never met a kid that flat out could not tell the truth until my son. I also take into consideration the girl that he was with. If you remember a while back I posted about my son having Facebook taken away due the the crude interactions with a couple of his friends. She was one of them and probably the worst. For a reminder of that post Click Here.
There are many things that bother me about his story. There are too many things that don’t add up. I know if I was being chased and thought I was in physical danger, then I would run for help. Not just run away, but I would run and find anyone who could help. Where could he have gone for help you ask? Well lets start from the closest place and go to the furthest place.
The girl lived a block or so away so why not run there? Okay, maybe that is the direction these “bullies” were coming from and they couldn’t go that way. You can’t get to where they ended by running through the neighborhood because there is a waterway separating the two areas. That means they had to run out of the neighborhood at the entrance. If that is the case as you are leaving the neighborhood, you run straight at a 7-11 which sits comfortably at the entrance. There are always cops there too! They did not do this. Instead they made a right turn out of the neighborhood, crossed a steel bridge, and proceeded down another main road. They passed by a Food Lion Shopping center with a bunch of stores and a few restaurants. From there they continued down this main road and made a right turn down a side street and ended up in a neighborhood a couple of miles down. I used to live in that neighborhood when I was a teen so I know exactly where it is! All they would have had to do is go into a business and say HELP!
I am sorry, but what kind of person believes a story like that? Oh wait, I know. His Grandmother believes a story like that. She is on Facebook and Lord knows where else making this kid some kind of martyr. It doesn’t surprise me though. Since he was a baby she has made excuse after excuse for the things that he has done. He can do no wrong in her eyes. Everyone else sees it but not her. Every person in our family that heard this story has called B.S. except her. Lets do the list. Me, my wife, my parents, my brother, his aunts and this list goes on and on.
You are probably thinking “wow I can’t believe he is calling her out like that”. Well, believe it. I normally don’t do things like that but when you deal with someone choosing favorites (and everyone but her sees it), believing the most ridiculous stories and defending him tooth and nail, there comes a point where you aren’t doing this kid any favors. I will go ahead and say that if she reads this and has a problem with it then feel free to come to me about it. My wife is asleep right now and has nothing to do with what I am writing so leave her out of it. The bottom line is that in the realm of fact or fiction, this story is definitely fiction. I know it, his mother knows it and now so do all of you!
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You TOTALLY have my support! I have been there done that so to speak. I have two older sons, as you know, and one of them was a like Chrisitan. He was always getting into trouble and never telling the truth. The problem was that his younger brother knew his brother was always in trouble, so he blamed everything he did wrong on his brother. It was always Andrew’s fault. We were very aware the younger one, Eric, was the instigator. He was always getting Andrew to do things he would get into trouble over and he would also pick on Andrew for hours until Andrew would blow up at him. He took it until he couldn’t take it anymore. The problem came when they would visit their paternal grandmother. She believed Andrew was the troublemaker and that Eric was an angel and never did any wrong. So Andrew always came home from visiting his grandmother angry and upset. Eric came home with *stuff* for being so good. We finally had to step in and explain to her what was going on and try to make her see what was happening. Sometimes she caught it and sometimes she didn’t. We finally started sending them by themselves so that she could see Andrew was a good kid when his brother wasn’t tormenting him every moment of the day.
I wish I had some answers for making his grandmother see the truth. I am guessing she doesn’t *want* to see the truth. She has convinced herself this boy is perfect and that he deserves to be rewarded for bad behaivor and I am afraid there is little you can do to change that other than limiting his time with her.
Now given the story you were told, I want to say, it is also obvious to me that he lied. Why you might ask? Just because you want to know everyone’s perspective. Why didn’t they run back to his grandmothers? Why didn’t they run to her house? Why didn’t, as you put it, find an adult in a house or a store and ask them to call the police? Since I have raised 3 teenage boys, I can tell you exactly what happened. They wanted time alone and knew they weren’t going to get it without coming up with some sort of crazy story to cover themselves. Unfortunately, they didn’t do a very good job of coming up with something that was believable!
So now the hard part starts. It’s time for some tough love and some tough punishment for lying, breaking the rules, and putting you and his mother through the hell of wondering where he was for 7 hours and being worried something had happened to him. They have NO clue at that age what kind of dangerous situations they can get themselves into. They think they are invincible and untouchable and that all adults just don’t know what they are talking about. I don’t envy you trying to get that message through his head. But I will make one suggestion. I saw a picture of a kid the other day holding a sign on the sidewalk at a very busy place of business. The sign said, “I lied to my father and did such and such.” Very embarrassing to say the least and maybe that might work to at least give him pause before he tries a stunt like that again. I wish I had more ideas. The only other suggestion I have is to take a trip to the military school like I suggested before and put on the act of your life!