A/N: Oh my god, I'm so under the weather. My voice sounds funny, my head hurts, my nose is runny… ahhh! And worse, school starts next week.
I hope I don't pass this on to little Dylan. Anyway, a lot of new cute kids in this chapter. I hope you enjoy this one.
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Dressed in his usual work clothes, with his detective pin, badge sans the gun, Mac sat patiently at the back of the room beside Stella who was in a pink and green blouse and black slacks. He had his kit by his feet. Dylan was chatting with his friends up front, waiting for their teacher. Some kids were staring at Mac, actually, his badge.
"Mister Sir," a blond little girl approached them, "are you Dylan's daddy?"
"Why yes, I am, little girl," he answered, shaking her hand. She batted her eyes and smiled.
"I like the shiny thing," she said, pointing to his NYPD badge. "It's pretty." She then walked over to Stella. "Hello," the she waved. "You have pretty hair."
Stella chuckled and put a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "Thanks," she said. "You're very pretty, too, Maggie." Her mom was the PTA president and Stella knew her well because of the countless times she declined Mrs. Berringer's offer of a spot on the board.
Little Maggie chuckled and ran to her desk, two rows to the right from Dylan and Bobby's. Their teacher, Miss Simmons, dressed in an "I Love My Kids" shirt, entered and started class.
They sang their 'Good Morning to you' song. Afterwards, Miss Simmons told some jokes that even got Stella laughing. Not to be overdone, some kids shared some jokes of their own. "Don would really sell here," Mac whispered to Stella.
She chuckled and replied, "Yeah, his jokes as well as his charm. That man has the charisma to stun even the youngest of girls."
"Yeah, they'd probably think he's a blue-eyed giant or something…"
That thought was cut short when Miss Simmons turned her and the class' attention to them. "Today, we have our dear Dylan's parents to show us what they do for a living. Yesterday, we had Carmen's parents show us how to make candy." Dylan stood up and walked over to them then led them to the front. "Dylan, would you mind introducing your parents to us?"
He nodded and said, "This is my daddy. Mac Taylor. And this is my mommy, Stella."
The kids said, "Good morning, Mister and Missus Taylor. How do you do?" in unison.
"And this," Dylan continued, rubbing Stella's tummy, "is my baby sister, Bumpy. She's still inside."
A hand shot up in the air and Bobby cried out, "My mommy's pregnuts, too."
Two more hands followed suit and two more little voices were heard. "My mommy is pregunts," and "Mine, too!"
"Great, you can have a 'pregnant mommies club'," Mac said to Miss Simmons. All of the adults laughed.
"Anyway, what does your parents do?" the teacher asked Dylan.
He smiled and said, "My daddy is a New York de… detef," he looked at Mac for help. His dad whispered it in his ear. "Detective!" he exclaimed proudly.
"Wow," Maggie gasped, eyes on the 'shiny thing'. "Are you a cop, Mr. Taylor?" she asked with wide eyes.
All the kids were waiting for his answer. Dylan was hugging his mom's leg. Mac knelt down to Maggie's level and the little girl giggled. "In a way, yes. I'm an officer of the New York Police Department."
"The blue," a boy behind him said. Everybody looked at him. "My dad was a policeman, too. He was on the horsies but he's…" Little Ernie looked down and pouted. He lost his father two years ago in the line of duty. Stella sat down to comfort the little boy.
"That's right," Mac said, standing back up and walking on the middle aisle. He ruffled Ernie's hair as he passed, earning him a smile. "We are also called 'the blue' because we usually wear uniform in the color blue."
He felt a slight tugging at his coat and looked down. A shy Asian girl asked quite timidly, "But why are you wearing something my daddy would wear?" Four-year-old Anita Yung's father worked for the 1st National Bank. She chewed on her lower lip as Mac's attention turned to her.
"Well, it's because I'm a different type of cop," he started.
But before he could say anything more, a big kid said, "So you don't go out saying, 'Freeze, you're under awest!' or… or put bad peoples to peesum?" That big kid was Jonas Hart and in his interview, he said that he wanted to be a cop when he grows up.
Mac stood up again and continued with his explanation, "I still do. But you see, kids… I work for the crime laboratory. I am what they call a crime scene investigator." He could see little faces wrinkle in puzzlement and interest.
"It's that big building close by, right, Mr. Taylor?" Ernie perked up. He nodded.
"What do you do, being a infestigater?" another little boy asked.
Stella chuckled. She knew that Mac could get uneasy with kids. Explaining job descriptions to a roomful of four-year-olds could be harder than cracking a suspect. "Whenever a bad thing happened, like somebody got hurt or… killed," he heard a few gasps but continued, "Me and my team explore the place where it happened. We then collect evidence to help us catch the bad guy. And then we go back to our office and study what we have collected." He saw heads nodding and some are smiling. "But we don't just collect things we see. We take picture of them and take notes." Just then, there was a flash of a camera. Stella was taking pictures.
A shaky hand rose up and Carrie Eames asked, "Do you have a gun? Mommy said guns are bad." The class rumbled with "I wanna see! I wanna see!"
"Uhm, children… I don't have my gun with me," he said and the kids sighed. "Your mommy's right – guns are bad if you use it to do bad things. You see, cops have guns to stop something bad from happening or saving another person from a bad guy. Robbers," he said, using the analogy, "use guns to do bad stuff. You should stay away from them. Can you all promise me that?"
"We promise!" they all said in chorus. Even Miss Simmons replied.
"But how do we know who are the cops and who are the robbers?" Carrie asked.
Mac smiled. "These are pretty involved kids," he said to himself. "Sure, I'll show you," he replied. He reached for his belt loop and pulled out his badge.
"The shiny thing!" Maggie cried out, jumping up and down. She was excited to see it and hear about it. The whole class seemed to follow her lead.
"Yes, Maggie," Mac chuckled. "This shiny thing that I have here is called a badge." He held it up for everyone to see. "All police men and women have this. If a person tells you that they're a cop, ask for his or her badge just to be sure." He knelt beside his son and instructed him to let his classmates hold it and look at it up close. "Be careful, okay?"
Dylan nodded and held the badge with two hands. He went to Bobby and Bettina first then the chain started. Some kids put it close to their faces, as if examining it for tarnish and cracks. When it reached Jonas, his hand rose again and stood up, "Mr. Taylor, do you go like this?" he asked, flashing the badge and saying, "I'm a cop. Stop, you bad guy!" The whole class laughed.
Mac was laughing himself. "Yes, sometimes I do. Usually, it's 'Freeze, NYPD!' That's what we say." Stella hid a laugh seeing her husband goof around like that. Obviously, he was loosening up around these kids.
When the badge finally reached Maggie, she looked at it as if it's made of real gold. "Wow," she gasped. She looked like she was about to kiss it. "How do we get one of these?" she asked.
Miss Simmons smiled at her class. They were genuinely interested. Well, at least at Mr. Taylor's job – the previous parents weren't half as engaged as the Taylors were. "You know what, Maggie," Mac replied, "if have to do well in school. Get good grades and do well in school." He straightened up again and addressed the whole class, "If you want to achieve something… work for it. Nothing compares to the feeling of getting something you like or want knowing you worked very hard for it." He smiled at his family and the teacher, seated at the corner.
He clipped his badge back on when something jingled. "What's that?" Anita peeped in her little voice.
"These," Mac said, unclipping another item, "are handcuffs. We put these on bad people so they won't get away." The held them up but refused to let the kids hold it.
"Why not? I have plastic ones at home, Mr. Taylor," Jonas whined.
The teacher decided to butt in, "Jonas, these are real handcuffs. Not a toy." He settled down and nodded.
A collective, "Awww…" was heard in the room. But Mac had other things up his sleeve.
He went over to the teacher's table and opened up his kit. "This, boys and girls, is my box of neat things."
Stella covered her mouth to keep herself from laughing. "Box of neat things?" she repeated to herself.
But for all the corniness, Mac made up for the surprise he actually brought to all the children. He started handing out smaller boxes to each kid with the help of their teacher. Even Dylan got one. And Miss Simmons, too. "Stella, would you care to help me here?" he said to her. She smiled and stood up.
"What are you up to, Detective?" she asked, getting her own little box. She opened it up and found a ten-card, a dollar inkpad and a pair of latex gloves. He handed her a UV penlight. She looked at it and the pen actually writes with invisible ink. "Oh, I get it," she said with a wide smile.
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Hey! Sorry if I had to go w/o replying to your reviews. I have to fly somewhere.
Thanks!