Con men at age eight

I realized that my duties here in Charlotte involve being illegal for a just cause. A few days ago one of our next door neighbors was arrested. Her brother came to her house to get money to bail her out of jail but the house was all locked up (why wouldn’t it be). So he asked me to help him check the windows to open them. Unfortunately they were all locked. The locks on the windows in this neighborhood aren’t real great so when we found one that seemed to be the “weak link” we decided that was the target and with a little help form a screwdriver and a butter knife (reminds me of 705 in the Empress) we were able to pry the window open and I crawled through. This is better known as “breaking and entering”. So I unlocked the front door to let her brother in and that was the end…or so I thought. He constantly forgot things in the house so I constantly had to go to a different window (he left this one unlocked) open it and reach in to unlock the door for him. So I am guilty of performing a “b and e” four times within a one hour time period. Later on I was off to pick-up Mason (Cory Harrison’s son) form school. Jeremy anted to ride with me. Jeremy is a very interesting character. Like most of the kids around here he’s always doing things and trying to get out of trouble and treating everything as a joke. He’s a very manipulative person. He asked me to stop by a fireworks shop on our way back. That’s fine no harm in that. He started joking and saying that he was going to steal boxes of fireworks and he’s got big pockets and all that stuff and I laughed at him because he was joking, the only problem was I soon realized we wasn’t joking at all. I pulled a package of M-80 from his pocket and when he realized I wasn’t going to be leaving him out of my sight the rest of the time we were there he just got angry. He tried to scam free stuff form the cashier and ask for free fireworks because he bought something for a dollar. He’s a very manipulative person and will always press the envelope as far as he can to get his way. The strangest part is that he doesn’t feel the least bit guilty for anything he’s done. We got back in the car and a few miles down the road he pulled some other things out of his pocket that he didn’t pay for. I knew that I couldn’t make him take it back to the store because he would just sit in the car and I can’t force him to walk. It’s strange that someone who is fifteen years old can steal like he’s been doing it his whole life. All I could do was let him know that stealing wasn’t cool and not acceptable and I would punish him by not taking him for a ride anymore (he loves riding in a car for some reason). It sometimes makes me feel like these kids are too far gone, there hearts are too hard and no matter what we say or do we can’t change them, but I do know that love conquers all and never fails and there is power in prayer and we are commanded to pray continuously. That is my battle strategy. Now I am going to band and songsters practice and then I’m off to pick up a couple Australians from the airport. Hallelujah.