My oldest son, let’s call him Josh, has been all boy and full of energy since he was born. My wife and I even had to sleep in shifts when he was a baby because he only required 2.25 hours of sleep a day. He wasn’t a bad baby – he just didn’t like to sleep.

When he was about three years old he was hard to keep up with. He ran full speed wherever he went, like his butt was on fire or something. We have a five acre pond down the hill and he loved to go throw rocks in the water. That’s what he and I had done for years every day I got off work.  Since he wasn’t old enough to understand he couldn’t go do that by himself we had to build him a playpen so he could play outside without worrying about him going down there. My father-in-law and I worked all day on this play pen. It had to be Josh proof so we took some extra precautions. Seven foot high chain link fence walls with no room for him to slip through a crack and the latch was high enough that Shaquille O’Neal would even have trouble reaching it.

Once we finished we put some of his favorite outside toys in the playpen and let him go. He was having a ball. Never once did he give us any indication that he wanted out. It was right outside the window so we could see and hear him at all times. We hadn’t been inside for six minutes when we heard something very odd. Nothing…which was the odd thing. We didn’t hear a thing, so we walked to the window to investigate. Melissa screams “My baby is gone!” Oh, craaaaap! So we all ran outside and sure enough he was gone. But the latch was still locked and nothing was disturbed.

As my Sherlock Holmes investigative skills kicked in I noticed a diaper hanging from the top of the fence. How in the heck? This kid is part Ninja. I took the diaper off the fence and held it top Melissa’s nose like a bloodhound and said “Go get him girl!” Not smart, not smart at all. But it worked, she spots him right away. As I turned around there was this little naked butt hauling tail down to the pond. My father-in-law and I just shook our heads, a whole day’s work just wasted. I’m just sayin’.