Wednesday, November 05, 2008

I'm Proud Of My Boy After One Of Life's Had Lessons

When I came home from work today I was greeted by a forlorn son. I asked him what the problem was and he looked sheepishly over his shoulder in the direction of his lunchbox. Inside the lunchbox was his unfinished lunch. Thinking that he hadn't eaten his lunch, which angers me greatly, I told him off.

Let's go to the start of the story. Last night at taekwondo they hadn't out boxes of 48 Caramello koalas to volunteers who wished to sell them for fundraising. My boy was one of the quickest to raise his hand. This morning he took 20 to school and I thought that he might sell 10 as I didn't think that many kids would have too much money to spend. They were priced at $1 each and they are of a decent size so the price is reasonable. He sold all 20. They were very popular with the kids. Even his maths teacher bought two.

The reason he was so downcast was because he only had $18.05 for his efforts. Either some kids cheated him by using five cent coins instead of 10 cents or he didn't count the money properly. For whatever reason he was short. The reason I am proud of his is that he didn't ask me to make up for the shortfall but went to his piggy bank and made it up himself. Not only is he raising money for someone other than himself but he takes the fall for the shortcomings. I've heard of parents bailing their children out for traffic infringements and the like when the kids are adults but my eight year old has a decent head on his shoulders. And he will learn a great lesson from this. Tomorrow he intends to take the 28 remaining chocolates to sell but will ensure that he is given the correct money before handing over the goods.

Reminds me of my motto - "Don't Trust Any Bastard".

3 comments:

Susan Ham said...

Ahem! Did you make amends for your blunder? He is mature beyond his years. Well done. I am very proud of him.

Hammy said...

Where is my blunder in this? I'm not the one paying for my kid's mistakes. I've explained to him how I'm proud of his grown up attitude towards responsibility.

Anonymous said...

Good for him. What he should do is count the money first before handing over the product to make sure it is correct. The teachers may even have shorted him by mistake due to getting older. I learned the hard way working in a shop at 15. If you don't take the money first they will run off with the product. lol Annette