Reunion of vandals

Boy-child and his childhood buddies are all still great friends.  They don’t get to see each other much anymore.  One is employed in a city about 5 or 6 hours away, one is in graduate school the same distance away in the opposite direction.  One is employed in another province (4 day drive away), another lives here but boy-child himself lives about 4 hours away.  One is a bit of a world traveler and had a recent trip to Amsterdam for a month or two and had a job lined up in Spain for the summer.

These are the Tupper Street Vandal kids and they are also the same group whose parents have all taken a collective approach to parenting the group versus just parenting their own kids.  They’re all really good kids.  On the weekend they had their signature potluck barbeque and I was invited.  They are funny that way and like to have the parents join their fun (who does that??) and myself and one other set of parents were there.  I got to hear some interesting stories of things these kids did (my son included) at their houses.  There were stories about bouncy ball games in the house where an antique light fixture got broken; stories about more ‘ball games’ in the house where an antique tea set was broken.  There were also stories of holes left in walls (hockey in the house maybe?) and how a picture covered it up for years before the parents found out.  The best one though was a sibling story.

This one friend of boy-child’s had an older brother who as often part of the fun.  One day, this older brother wanted to show them something he learned in chemistry class.  There was a fish tank in the room and brother wanted to show how you could make fire on top of the water using whatever method he had learned.  So, sure enough he gets a fire going in the fish tank on top of the water.  It was all pretty cool and all until boy’s friend says “doesn’t glass expand when it gets hot?”  No sooner did he say that and the fish tank exploded across the room.  That one they couldn’t hide from the parents.  I’m so glad I didn’t have a fish tank!