A truly weird story

Yesterday, we had a busy day.  Father Jo came over and blessed our house.  While he was at the house, Preston asked him to bless his new car.  The car that he worked all summer to pay off.  The car that he literally has had paid off for 3 weeks.  After Father Jo left, Preston asked if he could go to the swim beach at Pomona lake with 3 of his friends instead of staying for Sunday dinner.  I had a weird feeling about it.  I told him I thought he should stay for dinner, but he didn’t want to, and I didn’t really have any reason to say no.  He is a good kid, he had worked hard all weekend. We let him go.   

We had Sunday dinner, Evelyn swam, Andrew and Quincy went fishing for a while.  Everyone left. I said to Jim I was going to bed early. I went to the back to put my pajamas on, and my phone rang. It was Preston.  He was literally yelling into the phone, clearly upset and rather hard to understand.  Preston rarely gets upset.  He was yelling “mom a meth head stole my car and drove it into a tree….I don’t know what to do, I am so mad!”   The way he was yelling was very uncharacteristic of Preston, so I sort of thought he was joking.   But after a couple minutes of him repeating it and seeming more upset, I told him to call the police and we would head over there.   Jim was just crawling into bed.  He got up, and we headed over.  Apparently, Preston and his friends were swimming and horsing around.  Some words were said between this group of older, incredibly intoxicated people and Preston and his friends. Then Preston said one seemed to be drowning.   They started over to help him, when another one of them ran out of the water and grabbed their things.  Took off with Preston’s shoes and keys.  Then got into Preston’s car and took off, but was so intoxicated he missed the road out and smashed into a large tree.   Then he fled on foot.  Which is apparently when Preston called me. When Jim and I got there we found 4 incredibly shook up boys, half a dozen police officers, an ambulance, and a park ranger.  Preston’s car is toast.  The police were still interviewing the friends of the guy who stole Preston’s car.   We waited while Preston filled out a report so we can file charges.  One of Preston's friend's dad has a truck and trailer, so he came and loaded the car for us.  We will haul it to see our old buddy  Jagger today.  Sadly, I doubt that a meth head has insurance.  I doubt that he has any money to pay for damages.  We know that after wrecking Preston's car, he got into his own car, rolled it and that is how they caught and arrested him.  He has several charges against him, but that likely just means that we are out the money for this car.  On an up note, the park ranger told us that they will press charges for him damaging the tree.  Small consolation.  

Preston is incredibly angry, but we told him we would sure rather pick him up mad than hurt.  I am thankful that Preston and his friends were ok.  I am also thankful that I have a day job where I have a few minutes between projects that I can make some phone calls and figure out what we need to do next.  When I say I like having a project, this is NOT what I had in mind!