Pint-sized con artists

It amazes me what kids come up with.

Today at school/work (I never know what to call it!) the bell had just rung, signalling the beginning of lunch hour. I was rounding the corner in the hallway and was facing one of the doors to outside when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white streak, hear a loud BANG and saw kids outside startle.

What on earth???

I took a peek outside the door and quickly figured out what had happened. Some kid had thrown a milk container (thankfully plastic!) out the second floor window. No sooner had I seen this than I heard the thundering sound of kids running down the stairway behind me.

"Wow! That was cool!" --- "Quick! Let's go see it!" --- "We have to get out of here before we get in trouble!" and general giggling and noise.

As they rounded the corner, the three "usual suspects" almost ran smack into me. "One, two, three!" said I, pointing at each culprit. "Busted!" Very quickly the third grade boys had confused looks on their faces and Ringleader started asking, "What? What do you mean? We were just going down to use hte bathroom then heading outside!" [insert batting eyelashes and sickly sweet tone of voice here] Nuh uh!! Ah don't THINK so!

I proceeded to tell them what I saw and heard and saw the second milk bomb in one of the boys hands, surely ready for a second launch. It disturbed me how well Ringleader could lie. Too bad his buddies didn't have his same skill. Somehow they wanted me to believe that the milk "accidentally" fell out of the window, which only opened wide enough for them to force the milk cup through with lots and lots of wiggling over about three different lips. I had the boys clean up the milk, and walked them to the office.

While there, they got the standard teacher lecture, including the "What if it hit someone?" and "Now you've made it worse by lying about it." Ringleader's buddies tried to get off using a myriad of excuses, one of which was the best excuse I've ever heard:

"I didn't do anything, Ringleader threw it out the window."
"Yeah but it was your idea!"
"And you held the window open."

And here's the excuse... can we say, victim syndrome???

"Yeah, but I would never have thought of that if Ringleader hadn't told me to do it... because I'm not a very good thinker."

You're smarter than you think you are, kiddo, now if only you would use your powers for good and not evil. Heh.