We'd had a couple of break-ins at our rental house, so one day my husband left and I stayed home in the dark house without turning on lights, TV, or radio, or opening blinds. I waited with a stage sword my husband had gotten for his Society for Creative Anachronism costume.
I could hear the kids talking before they broke the kitchen window (for the third time) and sat in the dark living room until the two who actually entered passed me. Then I stood up with the sword and yelled, "STOP!" There I was a short, fat white woman with a long sword, emerging from what they had thought was an empty house.
The two kids split and ran past me, out the backdoor, past the third kid who was their lookout, leaving him standing there, going, "What?!" I managed to grab him but he twisted loose when he saw the sword.
Their panicked run down the street attracted attention and when the police asked around the neighborhood, all the neighbors identified them - it turned out most had suspected who had been doing all the break-ins in the neighborhood but no one wanted to turn them in.
In the long run we were persuaded to not press charges. The kids' parents paid for replacing the windows that had been broken. We were told that the event would remain on their records, which it did. A few years later when they broke into the elementary school in that little town, trashed the classrooms and set fire to the building, their past records got two of them charged as adults at the age of 17. The third - who I think was the lookout for the burglary of our house - was charged as a juvenile at 15 and put into the juvenile correction system.
I wonder if those boys had not been let off on their earlier crimes if they might not have ended up destroying many of the records of that little community and costing the county millions of dollars to rebuild the school. I wish their parents and the system had done more to teach them to be more responsible people.
I also wish I had pictures of me waving the sword at them - and of their faces when they saw me do that!
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