Last Thursday night, the boys stayed\u00a0out after dark\u00a0playing\u00a0football in the cul-de-sac. We were just about to call them in for a late dinner, when they came in through the front door.<\/p>\n
“Can we ride to the gas station?” my youngest son asked.<\/p>\n
The gas station\u00a0is\u00a0about\u00a0a mile\u00a0away, which isn’t too far, but it was dark outside. “Why?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Cause they have Icees and we have a buy five get one free coupon, so we’re all gonna ride there and get Icees.”<\/p>\n
“So the whole group is going?” my wife\u00a0asked.<\/p>\n
“Yeah.”<\/p>\n
“Okay,” I said. “But ride on the sidewalks not the street. It’s dark out.”<\/p>\n
They nodded and ran back outside.<\/p>\n
“I wonder who’s getting the free one?” I asked my wife.<\/p>\n
“Probably whoever has the coupon,” she said.<\/p>\n
We sat down and ate\u00a0our own dinner,\u00a0then flipped through the T.V. channels looking for something good to watch.<\/p>\n
The front door opened again, and the boys returned. One’s shirt was stained pink. The other was carrying a bag of chips. Neither had an Icee.<\/p>\n
“What happened?”<\/p>\n
“Bad idea,” my oldest son, shaking his head.<\/p>\n
“We got the Icees,” his little brother added, “but no one thought how we’d get them back. It’s really hard to carry\u00a0an Icee when you’re riding your bike.”<\/p>\n
“How’d the other kids do?” my wife asked, laughing.<\/p>\n
“Worse.”<\/p>\n
Taking turns, they\u00a0described how each child lost his Icee. It was quite a story. There were shouting matches, near crashes, and a whole lot of spilled ice.<\/p>\n
“So… next time?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“We walk.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As far as adventures go, I didn’t think that a trip to the corner gas station would be particularly perilous. Clearly, I was wrong. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-HB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}