Bomb threats make me sleepy

On Sunday after church, Jonathan and I got together with Jen and Jen and Joe the Sunday school superintendent and Andrew, and a handful of mothers with tents and Christmas trees and small children whose names I don't know, and we started decorating for VBS.

It's a camping theme (thus the tents and trees), and it was so much fun. Jonathan and Joe got inveigled into moving chairs and tables and then making the columns into "deciduous trees" by the copious application of brown paper. I got to raid the sacred supply closet and make bugs and bats and other fauna to populate the trees.

So there we were, stringing pompoms, gluing popsicle sticks onto bat wings, and be-glittering fish, when Joe hangs up his cell phone and casually states, "By the way, this building is under a bomb threat."

Oh, is it?

"Yeah, apparently someone left a suspicious package out front by the sign. So the police and the bomb squad are out there. They've closed down the road. I think they have a bomb-sniffing dog, too."

"Didn't the police knock on the church doors and tell us?" demanded one of the mothers.

"Yeah, they did. And now I'm telling you. It's not that someone called up the church and said 'I'm going to blow you up!', there was just this mysterious briefcase out front. So someone called the police."

Andrew slipped out to go report on the excitement for us. I added jaunty feathers to my hot pink bird. Jonathan made more trees.

Around three o'clock, everyone started drifting away. We decided we should go, too, so we went out the side door to retrieve Olwen. Sure enough, there were a gaggle of squad cars and a bomb trailer and news guys with cameras. Unfortunately, one of the police shouted at us as we headed for the car. We explained that we really weren't trouble-makers crossing police lines; we had just been in the church and happened to be parked over there and wanted to go home.

"Oh," the policeman said. "Well, you're free to go out the back way, but you absolutely can't go over near the sign until it's over. I'm not even allowed over there. I'm sorry."

Sniff.

We went away and sat dejectedly on the curb. Another nice policeman drove up and said it could be another hour, or five, and asked if there was anything he could do to help us. Not really. About five minutes later, he drove back. "It's all clear! You're free to go!"

Hurray!

Home we went, and I slept for about two, two and a half hours. I tell you, bomb threats make me sleepy.