The Scooter

The other day Bryce asked me if I remembered something that happened a couple of years ago that really was one of those unusual moments with a lesson learned. Since this blog is used mostly for a journal of what goes on in our family, I thought I would start documenting some of these little past moments so that they will be down for my kids to reflect on.

This is what Bryce wanted me to relate...

About 3 years ago I was sitting downstairs one morning at about 9:00 a.m. in our living room. Bradley comes running down the stairs with tears in his eyes. He was about 9 at the time. I thought he had fallen out of bed (he slept on the top bunk) or something. He finally calmed down a bit and breathed out that he just saw some guy take his scooter off our front porch! His room window was above the front porch. Since he slept on the top bunk he happened to look down and see this happen.

I should mention that Bradley had lost his first scooter and saved his own money to buy this one. So you can imagine how he was feeling.

I throw open the door and ran out to the street to take a look and sure enough, there was the kid making his way down the street.

I ran into the house, got my keys, started the car and raced down the street after him. By that time he was out on the main street but I was a mom on a mission. I caught up to him, rolled down the window and asked him who's scooter he had? I KNOW I caught him off gaurd. He stuttered around and I rephrased the question, "what the heck did he think he was doing taking my son's scooter."

He stammered around and finally lamely said "I was late to work and saw it on your porch and took it." I asked him where he worked, he said Juice it Up, which was in that general direction. I told him to hand over the scooter and he better give me his mother's real phone number right away or I was calling the police.

He gave me a number. I called it right away (thank goodness I brought my purse with phone.) It was the wrong number!! I told him to think carefully again, he gave me her name and number. He said she was at work. I got a voice mail and left a message for her to call me right away.

I let the kid walk the rest of the way to work. The mom called me an hour later. I related what had happened. She was apologetic and cited that he had been hanging around the "wrong crowd" recently and his behavior had been off. She said she would have him come and apologize to Bradley.

Did he ever... no. I was disgusted by that. I guess I should have called her back. But I didn't. In fact, Bradley's scooter was stolen several months later. I have to admit I wonder if it was him.

In any case, we all had a good discussion about stealing and how wrong it is.

We discusssed the lessons learned:

#1: How do the poor victims feel? Bradley felt so bad. He worked so hard for the money for that scooter!

#2: How dumb to do something like that. Eventually, you get caught doing something wrong and you have to pay for it in some way. I could have called the police and he would have had it on his record for a while, for what, a dumb scooter!

#3: Even if no person on earth catches you, Heavenly Father knows and then you really pay!

#4: One bad thing leads to another. If he had gotten away with taking the scooter. What was he going to tell his mom about where he got it. He would have had to lie!

#5: It's important what friends you hang around with. They can persuade you to do bad things!

I prayed that day that my kids would remember that lesson and help them to prevent them from falling prey to doing something like that themselves!