What is a prank phone call?

Photo was taken by +Krista Corcoran

This photo was given to us by our good friend for Christmas a few years back. But do you see that they are children and innocent in the ways of the world?  They are sweet loving children even our dog is terrific, and I am not just saying that because they are mine. They don't belong to me but they belong to themselves, I always say they belong to me, but really they are not things to be owned. They are my heart and my everything.
A few years after this photo is now my daughter attending a different school in the new institution we call junior high. My husband and I are away for our trip to celebrate our 19 years of being together as a couple. We arrive from our trip in the middle of the night, and the children happen to be staying with our family. I sneak in beside my daughter and fall asleep beside her, and within a few minutes of snuggling close to her, I notice she is shivering. Sounds came out of her that I had never heard before, not even when we had a near death experience in Cancun with a rogue wave.  Keilana continued to sweat and cry in her sleep. I quickly rubbed her back as I always did when they were just babies to console her, she looks at me and gives me a long embrace as she realizes we are home from our trip. The night was young, and her nightmares continued into the morning.
The next day I asked my daughter if something had happened while we were away because her nightmares were so intense. My husband quickly chimed in to say that something did happen. His sister explained that there was a disturbing prank phone call after school one day while we were away. It was an electronic voice that said: "if you don't leave money at a back of some random motel,  we will kill your whole family, their corpses will be taken outside to show you and kill you next".  My daughter quickly tells her aunt, and my mother in law, so my sister in law calls the school, the school said that they could do nothing because it happened after school and out of school. Do I take matters into my own hands? Of course, I do! I am a mother, so I quickly empathize as a mother. I don't call the police, I reach out to the mother, an explanation, an apology perhaps? I have the conversation in writing to prove it. I waited all weekend for the I will get back to you, response. No parents got back to me even when I asked for an apology. In the mean time, my husband is away, my daughter refuses to go to school and nightmares continue. I ask friends, a social worker, teacher, and family and they all told me to go to the police. In the back of my head, the girls are minors, I don't want them to get in trouble, but I need to stand up for my daughter, and  the nightmares cannot merely continue. Not just that, I am seriously afraid that someone is going to kill us in our home.  Yes, its funny to some people but to us, where I come from, death threats are not pranking phone calls. It is a criminal offense. Take a second and just think for a moment,  if I made the same "prank" phone call, a visible minority, made this prank, wouldn't I go to jail?
 I marched into the principal's office and seated beside her was a guidance counselor. I proceeded to tell them the incident, and we called Keilana down to confirm the story. The bizarre thing was before I  could be seated in the principal's office she said that she already knew why I came and when I asked she realized that it was not the same situation. I quickly realized that this cyber bullying was an epidemic in this not so safe Nova Scotia province. The resolution?  The principal said that the children and parents would be contacted in both schools involved and that the police will be called the children's name will be recorded but not charged. If the names came up again that charges will be laid. There was no follow up, No apologies. My husband went back to the school days after, who felt that perhaps nothing was done and that they just told us this resolution to appease us. We still don't know if anything was done.
But there was something special that came out of this story. That night, there were no nightmares, and our daughter had a dream with the whole family snorkling and swimming  in the ocean, happy, safe and sound.



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