You've reminded me of an incident when I was kid" When we lived in Florida, we were all out gator-bating one Christmas afternoon. One of the neighbors whose house was next to the drainage ravine where we were playing, saw a "wall of kids" come scrambling over the top of the ditch. This usually meant we'd found a gator and scrambled like mad to get out of its path.

Anyway, this neighbor called the parents of every child she recognized. Three of the kids, who were with me and one of my sisters, lived next door to us, one on the left and two on the right side of our house. We all arrived at my house and gathered under our weeping willow tree, laughing off the nervous energy of actually finding a gator. The mother of the boy who lived to the left of our house came storming out, wagging her finger at her son as she grabbed the scruff of his shirt to drag him home. She actually said to him in her diatriabe, "…and on Jesus' birthday too! Aren't you ashamed?"