About 10 years ago, when my son, J, was 16, he decided he could just pick and choose when he went to school. He was a really good kid in general, and made decent grades - he just REALLY hated school. I was a single mom with a career and had to leave for work before it was time for him to catch the bus, so usually I wouldn’t even know when he skipped. When I finally figured out there was a problem, I tried everything you could imagine to make sure J went to school. We argued every damn morning, I grounded him from everything he loved and I even started dropping him off before driving to work, putting J there long before school started. Unfortunately he figured out he could just walk back home. It was a rough time in our relationship, as sometimes I wanted to wring his neck, but he was a foot taller than me and built like an ox ;)

In Texas, if a child doesn’t attend school, the parents can be held responsible, up to and including jail time. Eventually I got a notice from the city that further truancy would result in charges. I was freaking out and showed it to J. He was completely dismissive of it and said lots of parents get these notices but nothing ever happens. So the problem continued.

One of the women on my team at work was engaged to a local police officer we’ll call G. G would occasionally visit the office and have lunch with the team so we were all friendly. The next time G visited I asked him for a favor in exchange for a case of beer. He agreed to help.

I waited for a day that I knew J was skipping school and called G from work. G then went to my house and bagged on the door yelling “Open up! Police!” My son answered, at which point G gave him a fake warrant for my arrest for failing to make J go to school. My son told him I was not home, so G told him to pass me a message: he would be back to arrest me in the next few days. G then left and called me at work to tell me it was done.

Now this next part, I actually feel bad about. My son absolutely fell apart! He called me crying, barely able to speak, squeaking out that the police had come to the house to arrest me. He apologized over and over. When I got home, he was a shaky mess and white as a ghost. He couldn’t even eat dinner. It was my original intention to tell him when I got home that I had set him up, but after seeing how upset he was, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought maybe I had gone too far. I just told him not to worry, that I’d call the city and take care of it the next day. I assured him everything would be OK.

The next morning J was up and dressed early and there was zero argument about him going to school. And it went that way all the way through to his graduation.

I finally confessed to my son just last year that I had staged the whole thing. Luckily he’s grown up enough to realize it was done with his best interests in mind, but he was still pretty pissed! In the end that case of beer was one of the best investments I ever made.