Veteran parents everywhere share with new parents and caregivers the universal truth:
"If your children are being quiet, worry, because they're probably getting into something they shouldn't."
And last week, one mom from Oregon would surely like to add:
"Especially if you live in a 1920's-style home with vents in the floor."
Wednesday, January 15, 2020 was a typical day in the Reedy household, when mom, Saydie Reedy, decided to go into the kitchen to wash some dishes while her two sons played.
All was fine at first, until she noticed her sons had been too mysteriously quiet for several minutes.
But when her three-year-old son, Jackson, came into the kitchen, trying to explain something to her, she knew it was time to investigate.
Reedy said:
"My oldest came running to me calmly saying, 'Baby in.' He has apraxia, which is a speech disorder and doesn't communicate well."
While searching the house for her ten-month-old baby boy, Kolson, Reedy noticed that the doors to one of the floor vents was open, which her son, Jackson, also gestured to. She couldn't see Kolson in there, but after not being able to find him anywhere else in the house, she became worried he must have somehow fallen down in there.
Reedy said:
"I couldn't hear him in there, but he was nowhere else to be found so I quickly called 911 panicking."
Just minutes later, a team of Coburg police officers and fire fighters arrived and teamed up to rescue the ten-month-old from the vent. It was a combined effort that involved getting into the crawl space under the house and manipulating the vent from the hallway.
Reedy said:
"An officer stripped to pants and T-shirt and went under the house. He shoved my son back up the vent, where another officer was waiting to grab him."
Other than having a few small scratches and being extremely dirty and a little grumpy, ten-month-old Kolson was completely fine and unharmed, despite slipping through the vent and falling eight feet beneath the house.
Reedy recalled:
"[Kolson] didn't break character once. When the officer lifted him up out of the crawlspace and handed him up, the first thing he did was glare at the officer."
You can view more information about this story here:
The next day, Reedy shared in the "I Love Coburg, Oregon!" Facebook group an account of her scary experience.
The mom profusely thanked the police department and the fire department for their quick and seamless response and for rescuing her son.
Reedy also decided to take Kolson to the police department for a quick visit, as a thank you for rescuing him. Reedy took a picture of the police officer who pulled him out of the vent—identified as Kevin Wilson—holding an inquisitive Kolson.
The police department later shared Reedy's post and captioned it:
"CPD got a little visitor. We're thankful our officers and our partners at Coburg Fire District were at the right place at the right time."
Reedy admitted she was worried when she first called in with the strange situation, but she has since received many positive responses.
Some shared their own strange predicaments they experienced with their children.
In parenting, there's always a first time for everything, and in this case, this situation was also a first for the Coburg police department and fire department.
But after thinking fast, on Reedy's and the team's part, little Kolson may have been a little too curious for his own good, but he ventured out perfectly fine.
Typically, I would write an intro about my own experiences with the weird kids at school, but I WAS the weird kid in school. Not in a bad way, more like a “I had a John Waters phase” when I was 16 and everyone knew it. So like, cool-weird. At least I hope so.
Schools aren’t always so lucky to have the cool kinds of weird kids though. The spectrum of weird extends even further than that, and can sometimes end up very disasterous.
U/Imaginary_East5786 asked: What was the weirdest thing the weird kid did at school?
Let’s start with the grossest of the gross. Because why not.
Was it worth it?
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He heard that you'd automatically get suspended if you peed your pants at school. He wanted to find out if it was true, peed his pants, got suspended.
> Observation: 'I've heard that by peeing your pants you will be suspended'
> Hypothesis: If I pee my pants I will be suspended
> Experiment: I peed my pants and I got suspended
> Conclusion: If I pee my pants I get suspended
Uhhh what was the intention here?
He got mad that he didn't understand how to play a game at lunchtime so he started hitting and punching the nearest person to him, who happened to be me. When I shoved him away and asked him what the hell was he doing, he whipped his unit.out, charged at me and when I shoved him away from me again he started crying and ran away with his member still sticking out.
Next ones up are the lowkey (or even highkey) disturbing stories. These weird kids can get a little scary.
Boom theret.
At my middle school, someone decided to get a little attention with a good old fashioned bomb threat. Except they thought that a bomb threat meant literally writing "bomb threat" somewhere. Worse yet, they misspelled the f*ck out of it, and wrote "boom theret."
So we had to go on a brief, very awkward lockdown while the police checked the perimeter for booms.
I hope there was no overlap in the columns.
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She wrote a list of all the girls and boys she wanted to kiss and murder and then casually passed it out on the playground.
2 separate lists or just the 1?
Same list 2 columns lol.
Holy crap.
Had the weird kid in high school ask the teacher to use the bathroom. She said no and this dude legit stabbed his hand with a pencil. Went all the way through then asked if he could now...sh*t was wild.
This was Pearl High School in Mississippi. This was the school Luke Woodham shot and killed his girlfriend and her friend at the school. This kid stabbed himself with the pencil about 2 months after that happened. This was late 1997.
Most of the time, however, the weird kids are pretty d*mn funny.
Ok, but this takes a lot of skill.
Had a kid nicknamed "cheeseburger" in the grade ahead of me in high school. He got his nickname because when it was time for his class to go to lunch, he snuck into the roof and crawled his way into the cafeteria, dropped down and proceeded to steal all the cheeseburger put out for lunch. Unfortunately they caught him in the act and sent him to the principal's office.
A year later he was caught stealing a teacher's computer, and in the process of being arrested he bit the officers hand, getting him sent to juvi never to be heard of again.
Every school had the cat girl.
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The weird kid at my highschool tied a string around his pencil case and pulled out around the halls pretending it was a dog. He still lives in my hometown. I think unemployed.
Oh also weird girl in middle school acted like a cat. She would meow and hiss at people, lick the water fountain and rub her body on the teacher's legs. In 8th grade. I have no idea where she ended up.
Mood.
Weird kid in elementary was a self proclaimed alien. Once, while waiting for the bus, she told me "On my planet we eat people like you" and proceeded to bite me. We later became friends in high school and she used to give me massages during lunch break in the quad. Just realized now she was likely tenderizing me.
I was exactly this kind of weird.
He didn't say much, but if asked, he would go to the front of the class and perform Tip-Toe Through the Tulips with all of the emotion and volume of Tiny Tim, holding nothing back.
The last I heard, he became an energy trader, made a ton of money and married well.
I can definitely relate to that last one. In middle school, my English teacher would let me go to the front of the class and perform monologues or songs from Broadway musicals. Weird, but that’s what happens when schools cut funding for the arts and the theatre kids have no outlet.
As long as you’re not hurting anyone, I say let your freak flag fly, man