The Night a Preacher Got Me In BIG Trouble!

Every Halloween our four girls come home to take their kids trick-or-treating, one of them even driving 3 1/2 hours in order to know her little ones are receiving candy from people she has known all her life.  The logistics of taking thirteen children including eight who are four years old and under makes for some very happy little cousins but some awfully exhausted mommy's.  But last year it was soooo much better thanks to our bus.  MaMa and PaPa strung orange lights on the inside of the bus, blew up orange and black helium balloons to tie on the back of each seat, and a plastic pumpkin lit up with electric lights peaked out the back window, saying hello to anyone driving behind us.  I was the official driver leaving the mommy's to the task of helping little ones get their robot box back on, their princess dresses in order, their candy bags back in each hand and lead their little goblins down the steps and out the door.

After a couple hours we adults and the little ones were getting tired and ready to call it a night. My three and a half year old grandaughter, Maddie Mae had come to sit on my lap as we drove slowly around town, her little face snuggled into my neck.  We tell the big kids we will go around one more block.  Up ahead we see one of our town's ministers handing out candy from his front porch.  He has been a minster in this town for a couple decades, knows everyone, everyone knows him and everyone just calls him Tom.  We pull up to the curb in our lit up bus, Tom sees us and brings the candy bag out to us to see what/who on earth this is.  When he sees and recognizes us he greets us all in his usual enthusiastic friendly way.  In his "preacher who loves everyone way",  he reaches down and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek.  Maddie Mae's little head popped up and stared at me, then at Tom and back at me again.  He gives all the kids candy then heads back to his house, us hollering goodbye and thank you and him hollering goodbye and your welcome.

  As I pull the door shut Maddie Mae with the most concerned little voice asks me, "MaMa, why did that man kiss you?"  I assure her that he was just Tom, and he loves everyone so he just gave me a quick kiss to say hello.  She laid her head back down, but soon, lifts up her head and again asks, "MaMa, why did that man kiss you?'  I laughed and tried again, I said, "Honey he is a person who loves everyone, just like Jesus loves us and so he just gave me a kiss on my cheek to say hello".  Down laid the little head again, for about ten seconds than popped back up with the same question.  I laughed and hollered at her mamma that this was really bothering her so Karen came up to the front to explain the same thing to her, that it was just Tom and Tom kisses everybody on the cheek when he says hello.  Maddie Mae looked at her and then at me, and laid her head down again, but it was quite obvious that she wasn't buying it.  As we drove on, I thought maybe Mommy had finally convinced her, but when we were almost home, her little head raised one more time, but this time she didn't have a question, she made a statement!   She looked me right in the eye and in all seriousness told me, "MaMa, PaPa needs us!"  I thought, Oh my word!  What is going on in this little childs mind!  "Honey," I told her, "You don't have anything to worry about, I love PaPa, and Tom was just saying hello.  Tom has a wife and he loves her, he was only saying hello, ok?"  She said a meek little okay and didn't say anything else.

 In all the excitement of getting home and the kids piling out the door, rushing in to dump, look over and count their haul, I forgot all about it.  But when I walked in the door, there was Maddie Mae standing beside PaPa in his recliner telling him all about it.  He said she was the first one in the door, ran right up to him and cupped her little hand around his ear and said "PaPa some man kissed MaMa!"  To Maddie Mae that trumped all the candy in the world and she took her duty to tell PaPa what had taken place very seriously indeed!  PaPa acted dutifully shocked and Oh so glad that Maddie Mae had let him know what had taken place in town!  We all cracked up as Maddie kept looking at me with such an accusatory look on her face.  PaPa thanked her over and over again for letting him know and he would take care of it and make sure that it NEVER happened again!  That seemed to reassure her, she went and joined the other kids and we never heard about it again.  But you better believe, I know how closely I'm being watched and I better not ever try pulling anything off on PaPa!   He has his very own little private detective ready to report my every move and if I do ever step out of line, I'm going to be in very big trouble indeed!