Remembering: Break In.

I was 8yrs old, and at the time we lived in an apartment in Chicago, IL. I will never forget that apartment, it was in a red building and in that building I had it all- my parents, sister and brother, both sets of granparents, aunts and uncles, and most of my cousins. Yes we all lived in that building, and with a lot of cousins- only chaos could come of it.

Some of the cousins were on the older side, but there were still many younger ones and anything we wanted to do, we would do. I still remember the time we broke into one of the apartments. now we weren't bad children, it was just that the people that lived there moved, or so we thought. It had been several weeks since they had been seen, or maybe it just felt like it to us. One day one of my cousins- she got curious; she asked a cousin to give her a boost to see through the window, and what she saw was a mostly empty apartment. The people were in fact moving, but they hadn't finished yet. We should've stopped there, but we didn't...

Given another boost, my cousin opened the window and climbed in and open the door for the rest of us. One after another we, the little cousins, went inside. Some took things, some didn't. Shortly after my mother and aunt found us and we thought we were in trouble except they, like us, also believed the people to have been fully moved. My aunt started taking things too. As luck would have it, while we were still inside, one of us heard keys on the door. The renters had come back at last. In a panic our group started exiting the apartment. It didn't end there...

Next day in school, just as I had gotten my lunch my teacher told me that I was needed at the office. I didn't know why, but I went and when I arrived at the office I saw my father, aunts and uncles, my sister and, the cousin that had opened the door for the rest of us. With them were policemen, yup! we were being taken to the police station. If most of the cousins were involved, why did only three of us get taken in? It seems that in the panic to get out of the apartment someone started shouting out names, and luck would have it that it was our names.

We arrived at the police station, shortly after- my mother and another uncle arrived from their respective jobs. After several hours we were let go because thankfully, this whole procedure was just to scare us...the kids. Let me say, I have never forgotten that experience, and I never did that again. In hindsight, it makes for great memories but at the time it was anything but.