Sunday School Goes Awry

Tonight we had a small group from church at our house. We call them "lifegroups" because we try to live life together. We seem to have an unusual demographic. Tonight we had one African American single mother with three kids, one Hispanic single mom with one kid, and one European American (white) single mom with two kids, plus us and our two kids. That's right, I am the only man.

Tonight the ladies had a discussion and I, theoretically, taught the kids. Alone. We went in the back yard and played a game. We sat at the table on the porch and tried to talk about gratitude. I read aloud a nice little story as our lesson, and I tried to lead a discussion about joy and being thankful...

But they ate me alive.

I couldn't get them to all be quiet at the same time. Everyone had to pee. The little ones were cold and told me so. I tried to fix the zipper on one little girl's coat and ended up getting her hair caught in it. At story time I tried to get them to settle down. Then one would start screaming, and I mean screaming, "BE QUIET!!!" and then someone else would scream at the first kid for not being quiet! And so on. It was a madhouse and I had zero control. I gave up discussion and let them play in the backyard, but then they started hitting each other with plastic swords, breaking toys, and screaming at the young ones to try to startle them.

Then they started throwing rocks at me. Other kids arrived out of nowhere, climbing over the backyard fence and rolling up on skateboards and bicycles. At this point I called the riot police. They arrived quickly and opened up with tear gas and water cannons, but the kids were relentless. They responded with molotov cocktails and built a barricade of burning cars and an old school bus. They took hostages. They had demands. Ice cream for dinner and new episodes of SpongeBob! At this point I took a rock to the head and remember no more.