Conflict-avoiders

I wasn't usually a trouble maker. You see, I don't like conflict; prefer to avoid it. To cause trouble meant to be in conflict, which is against my nature 

But one summer's night, I blew all caution to the wind, nature be darned.

We were visiting my grandparents and cousins who lived in a small town in northern Arizona. No, like really small. Everyone really does know everyone because everyone is related to everyone. It's a little scary, but I don't ask questions.

Well, as the evening drew nigh, we drew bored. Our parents were out to dinner with the grandparents and had left us in charge of the youngers....because we were trustworthy and conflict-avoiders.

But I had heard somewhere that if you tied cans to both ends of fishing wire and laid it across the road, when a car drove over it, it would catch on the tires and make a whole lot of noise as it was drug down the street, freaking the driver out. 

Why not test this out here?

And so we did. Several times. It was fun. Fun until the police officer's wife drove over it, went home, called her on duty husband.

Not knowing that was happening, we became bored again and threw the evidence in the trash and decided to do something else. About 10 minutes later, a cop car pulls up and shines a spotlight into the house. We start freaking out, scrambling to turn off all lights on the first floor, because he's not going to notice that. AT ALL.

I'm pretty sure he didn't come to the door, but if he had, we most definitely did not answer it, because, Hello!, we weren't there. No-one was. Didn't he notice the lights were all turned off??

After about 30 minutes we decided it was safe to come out of hiding and carry on with our lives.

Apparently after we had gone to bed, that officer stopped by and had a talk with our parents...who in turn had a talk with us, which completely turned me off to troublemaking.

Well, almost completely...