Sometimes good prevails

About a month ago, Brayden's long board, that he got for Christmas last year, went missing. He was afraid to tell me, so on the side he searched and searched for it. But finally came to the conclusion that it was just gone. The very next day, ironically and completely out of the blue, the neighborhood trouble maker/kid in our ward that we banned from our house for looking at porn on our computer/emo/girl pants wearing/probably going to end up in prison... came up to Bray at school and said (as he's laughing hysterically) "me and my friends stole your board." Brayden goes "give it back, that cost me $150.00" The kid goes "can't, loser, we thrashed it" And then he walked away laughing louder. Like he is some sort of Bad A. (Come on... everyone knows emo dudes are not Bad A's)

So Brayden comes home from school and tells me the sad tale and this is where I jumped in. As you all know I am non confrontational and try and stay out of all kid issues. But I did call the kid's dad and brought him up to speed on the delinquent ways of his precious son, to which he was apologetic and promised help... but in reality was NO help at all. Because I think he is at a loss at what to do with this kid and is overwhelmed by what could be in his future and I really do feel sorry for the man. So I didn't press the issue and chalked the whole thing up to a sad twist of fate and a lesson that Brayden needed to learn about taking better care of his things.

So Brayden, who has about 900 friends and some of them are big and mean set out to make this kid's life a living hell. (Granted not the best way to retaliate, but they are in fact in high school, and so we will give them some slack). And so B finds himself in the Principal's office 2 or 3 times facing Emo and his not - so - scary mother requesting that he back off and "stop being mean to her little boy." Which I think he did, but I can't vouch for the big, mean friends. And the whole time I'm going "Brayden, drop it, leave the stupid kid alone, it's your fault for leaving your board where they could get it anyway, you're going to get into trouble... blah blah blah.... super wimpy mom stuff.

Fast forward to Thursday night. B notices a policeman parked on our street. So he goes up to his car and knocks on the window. He says "This may not be police worthy, but my long board was stolen a month ago and I know who did it" Well, let me tell you that Officer Raines, of Eagle Mountain Law Enforcement had never had such an exciting case and was beyond thrilled that we had given him something to work on for the next couple of days and three hours later had rounded up the THREE boys responsible for the theft (one of them living in Pleasant Grove). He paid a friendly little visit to all of them and their shocked parents and consequently, I now have three boys bringing me $20 a week for the next three weeks, so that we can buy a new board.

I am pleased to report that all is well now in the life of Brayden Koenig, skater extraordinaire, who will soon be the proud owner of a brand new long board replacing his old, not in the greatest condition model. And I think he is the cutest boy there is and if he would just pull up his pants and stop wearing THAT BEENIE, I could be 100% happy. Thanks Officer Raines. You should get Crime Fighter of the Month.