A boy’s act of criminal mischief ends up in small town news, and his father uses it to teach him a valuable lesson. A real-life November story by Mauve Maude.
November 27, 2020
The signs had been up for weeks, months. The year was churning, boiling, but at the same time it was too calm. Tension was always in the air, but so was a quiet sense of endless banality. In 2020 you were grateful for both.
It was an election year, of course, and we were the standouts on our street, on our block, in the city limits, and beyond. While most yards continued in their normal states, several on our block had sprung up with signs supporting the President, and a flag or two, most of them on our street. Ours, or rather, my parents’ yard, where I grew up, had an ever-growing assortment of, um, anti-establishment signage.
First there was one declaring our household beliefs in equality, science, human rights, and kindness, next to the Little Free Library. There was one for Joe Biden, and after August, one for Biden and Harris. Then we started adding to the collection. There was one requesting the President be “dumped”. There was one hoping for “Nope!” And finally, perhaps the most controversial of all, one declaring that Black Lives Matter.
I’ll admit, the signs gave me a little bit of pause. About as long as they’d been up, anti-liberal/anti-Left/anti-Democrat rhetoric, some of it violent, was swirling freely, like dirt devils, especially where it was the more popular stance, which is where we were. We’d observed acts of measured aggression driving our vehicles, with the wrong candidate on the bumper stickers. In a town nearby, a brawl had broken out at a rally for a Democratic candidate running for the House, when anti-Left protesters, some armed, crashed it and drowned it out with bullhorns, screaming, “This isn’t Portland!” We heard reports of friends’ and family’s signs being stolen from their yards, or vandalized. And seeing people drive by or walk by slowly, glaring at the house, was a common occurrence, day and night. We were sure one or more signs would disappear at some point. I honestly feared worse, like a brick through a window, or worse than that.
I did not suspect anything of our neighbors, respectful and polite people who went about neighborhood business as if nothing was happening. After all, it’s not a secret to people who’ve lived there that my parents are staunch liberals in conservative surroundings. I was more worried about some passerby who hadn’t known we were there, some newcomer who saw us as a threat. I took comfort in seeing the occasional Black delivery driver in the neighborhood, knowing how many signs and flags he’d already seen driving into town, and hoping the comfort was returned, when he saw ours.
On Halloween, I debated back and forth until pretty much the last minute, whether or not to take my children trick-or-treating, not only because of the pandemic, and the nonchalant attitudes of some toward public safety, but also because of the political climate, three days before Election Day. Who were we going to interact with? Would they be civil? I was about as anxious as I’d been, but I ultimately decided to take them, with my mom. We drove to a couple other neighborhoods, famous for their enthusiastic Halloween celebrations, though everything was quieter than a normal Halloween would have been. We went to a few houses in each neighborhood, masked and maintaining distance. Then we brought them back to our neighborhood and let them knock on a couple more doors.
At the last house, a typical brick one with a big pickup in the front, bed loaded with bags of deer corn, the kids cleaned out a bowl set out at the end of the driveway, just as a lady was coming out to collect it for the night. She thanked them for finishing it off and wished us a good night, and told some other kids headed in our direction that she was all out. We took them home to enjoy their haul, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, that COVID/Contentious Election trick-or-treating was over. And Election Night came three nights later, and not one sign in our neighborhood had moved, not even from our yard. No window bricks either.
The day after the election was called for Joe Biden, I drove my children into town to visit the library. Afterward we decided, as we often do after the library, to go by Starbucks and get some “floofy” beverages (my daughter’s favorite word at the moment). When we arrived at our usual store, on a corner on one of the main arteries through town, we realized we’d come upon a rolling rally, of probably two hundred flag-festooned vehicles, for the forty-fifth President. As I waited for my kids’ drinks, I watched through the window. They drove by continuously for about twenty minutes, blowing horns, hanging out of pickup beds, windows, and sunroofs, yelling raucously. They’d get separated at the red light, and on green they’d flow through until the next one, one light change after another. A young man behind the counter, making drinks and wearing some Aladdin Sane-calibre glitter eye shadow, asked how my day was going. I told him I might need to find a different route home.
Finally back to my car, the parade still going by, I was handing out drinks when my mother called. She wanted to know if I’d seen the Black Lives Matter sign when we left. Because it had disappeared. She said the police were on their way, and then a couple neighbors came up and told her they’d seen a couple boys walking down the street with it. Then the police arrived, and she let me go. The rolling rally had passed on by then, so I went ahead and followed behind them, my normal route home. We soon caught up with them, taking up most of the road, so with my children I had to navigate my way through and out of it. By the time I arrived at my parents’ house, I was pretty tense.
The police officer was still there, but soon after my children and I arrived, he left to do a couple spins around the neighborhood and see if he saw anybody of interest. According to the neighbors he was looking for two boys, who were carrying a football. The neighbors had seen them walk around our block in one direction, parading the Black Lives Matter sign, laughing and waving it in the air in half-conquest, half-jest. Later they’d seen them come back from the direction they’d gone, but without the sign.
My mother, before we arrived, had posted about it on the town Facebook page, for anybody who might have any information. The town Facebook page, having just the capability one would expect for milling gossip and stirring up arguments and trash talk, quickly turned the post political. As we went on with our evening, my father ordered two more Black Lives Matter signs, and my mother spent some time fielding comments. While some voiced some form of support, others took the opportunity to trash the Black Lives Matter organization, violence, rioting, antifa . . . nothing our Black Lives Matter sign exactly stood for. Readers may or may not have known my mother’s profile picture represented a woman whose husband, children, and grandchildren are Black. She managed to have a little bit of conversation with a couple of commenters that was somewhat productive, but she eventually decided to just delete the post, thinking the moderator would probably be doing it soon anyway.
Again, we went on with our lives. I was anxious again, worried the sign would show up again, riddled with BB holes, or larger ones, and that my kids would see it. We had dinner, and everybody started settling into after-dinner chill time. The kids were getting ready to go to bed, my parents were watching television, and I was tucked away in the library, possibly writing another article, when I heard the sound of car doors closing at the street. Then there was the sound of somebody walking up into the yard, stepping onto the front porch, and knocking at the front door. My mother, in the front room, got up to answer, and I heard the muffled sounds of strange voices, introductions in humble tones, obviously someone who’d never knocked on our door before. And from what I could make out, it sounded like our sign had returned.
So I went to the front room, where I could hear my daughter buzzing about, obviously distracted from bedtime. I tried to steer her back in that direction, and I joined my parents at the door. Of course, she wanted to know what was going on too, so she followed me and listened as well.
There was a very young man, somewhat sheepish, guilty-looking, holding the Black Lives Matter sign in his hands. He and my mother had just had a short talk, and now my parents and his parents were chatting, while he stood by. I then recognized his mother as the lady who’d given my kids the last of her Halloween candy just a few nights before. By the time I came in, they were just talking about how long we’d lived in town, how long they’d lived in town, where everybody was from–while the young man holding our sign dug his heels into the grass. Of all of us, my father, born in the same hospital I was, had lived there the longest.
Later my parents would recall for me the portion of the conversation I’d missed: the boy’s father had read my mother’s Facebook post. Knowing they only lived a couple streets away, and knowing where his son, an eighth-grader, had been earlier that evening, he had his suspicions. He said they “did some investigating” and found out pretty quickly where the sign was. They talked to the other boy’s father, one of our other neighbors, who we all knew on a first name basis. And then they were on our porch with our sign. Apparently, the other boy had told this young man about the sign, and they’d decided to come and take it, as a joke. Evidently they’d hidden it at the other boy’s house, and that’s where they’d retrieved it.
“He’s got something to say,” his father had said.
And the boy, staring at the ground, had started to tell my mother what went down that evening. She stopped him, and told him to look her in the eye. After a nudge from his dad, he did. And after he explained and apologized, he listened as my mother, with my father standing by, told him what the sign meant to her and why we had it in our yard–that it wasn’t about violence or looting or hating police officers. It was about members of her family being in danger, and our lives mattering just as much as anyone else’s–not more than, but just as much.
Only toward the end of the conversation, after I came in, did his father reveal that he was a police officer himself, who lived on our block but worked in another town. He was also a military veteran. He told us he’d been around the world and seen some very evil things, and that his wish, was for our country to unify and be a shining example to the rest of the world, as we should be. And we could tell by his unwavering demeanor that he meant that a hundred percent.
When everybody finished talking, he instructed his boy to go and put the sign back up, right where he’d found it. My father offered to help, but the boy’s father insisted that he do it. And he did. And they said good night, and they took their son home.
We spent the rest of the evening in tired awe of what had just happened. My mother posted an update on the town Facebook page. Another young father in town, full of respect for my parents, had posted his own rebuke of the incident, as well as the negative reactions to my mother’s original post. He was also inspired to message my mother privately, apologizing for our Black Lives Matter sign being the only one in town. He promised to put one up in his yard too, which he did this week. It’s two feet tall and ten feet wide.
I haven’t been as anxious since that night, at least not about the political climate of our country. This is why.
We didn’t discuss political views that night. But I’m fairly sure the man who brought us his son didn’t share my parents’ opinions. It didn’t matter remotely to him. These parents had a duty to teach their son the difference between right and wrong, and they did exactly that, without hesitation. Regardless of their agreement or disagreement with the sign, or what they might have thought it stood for, regardless of the fact that this boy’s father was a police officer, and that Black Lives Matter is perceived to be an anti-police organization, they took the responsibility of teaching their son that wrong is wrong. Walking up into someone’s yard and taking their property is wrong. Taking a Black Lives Matter sign from your neighbors because your dad’s a cop is wrong, whether or not you know that your neighbors are Black, and that they have children too. They had to teach him right, and they did, with grace, honesty, and integrity like a rock. And I don’t think that boy, as he grows to be a man, will forget it.
I am grateful to know that people like this–parents like this–still live in this country, and more specifically in my hometown. I am grateful to know there are people among us who strive to be good examples, and do what is right, whether or not we agree. I don’t know who that man voted for. And to me, it doesn’t matter, not now. I don’t think it mattered to them either. Beliefs, opinions, and things we say are one thing. Actions are another. Actions are what I choose to inform me. And though voting is also very much an action, this family’s actions that night spoke to me volumes about their character. If they could manage that, possibly the day after this election didn’t go their way, there is hope for America going forward.
Good police officers and good soldiers do our country a great service, but I think as good fathers, and good mothers, they do one even greater, for each responsible and accountable adult they raise.
Our other neighbor, whose son presumably cooked up the idea and asked his friend to come along, and hid the trophy away in his house–hasn’t spoken a word to us, surely knowing that we must know. That’s an entirely different action. A lack of action is still an action. (I do know who he voted for.) And I’m sure we’ll continue to see plenty of that too. But it’s my desire to turn my face toward light, not the darkness that always waits where the light is not.
I feel like I can do that again. Among many other things, I’m thankful for that.