1. A nice car his first car will not be. It'll be a Ford P.O.S. (piece of shit)
2. He's assuming I'm going to buy him a car.
3. He's assuming I can afford something nice.
The kid treats his personal property with ZERO respect. He has had bikes and skateboards stolen because he left them outside. I have made multiple door keys because he loses them almost every week. Video games or movies are left at friends houses or his mothers house. His shoes get a little bit worn and his grandma buys him a $120 pair of Air Jordan's. Sterling's expectation is that something new will be bought for him if he loses something or something gets worn out or old.
I realize that I must be a bit to blame for this. I have to be, right? I mean...I'm the dad.
I'm not entirely sure how, tho. (except for the buying of a key for him every time he loses one...and yes...I have NOT bought keys for him and threatened to lock him outside...it doesn't seem to work.) I wear clothes and shoes until they have holes in them...then I wear them in the house only. I take care of my stuff. I can tell you where almost all my personal property is at any given moment...it's almost OCDish.
A couple of weeks ago, Sterling busted his phone. His mother pays for the phone service so she gets him a new phone when he breaks one. This time I offered to put him on my plan. Since she pays the same whether Sterling is on her plan or not...she kept him on her plan. This is where Sterling started asking his mother if he could get a smart phone. He told me that his mom spent $50 and got him a windows phone. (bad idea, said I)
On a Wednesday, while at his mothers...and 30 minutes past his bedtime, he texted me to let me know the windows phone was in his possession. Saturday morning I picked up Sterling. I asked to see his new phone and he gave me a story. He said, "I was in first period on Thursday and I dropped a pencil. When I bent down to pick up the pencil, my teacher came walking towards me...that's when my new phone fell out of my pocket and hit the ground. So I picked up the pencil AND the phone. My teacher thought I was playing with my phone. I WASN'T! So she confiscated the phone. I WASN'T PLAYING WITH THE PHONE THO...IT WAS AN ACCIDENT..."
His story was B.S. He knew it...I knew it! About 10 minutes of silence passed. I turned to him and asked, "you were showing off your phone, weren't you?"
"Yeah. And I need you to go to school and pick it up. The school won't let me have it...a parent has to pick it up." He replied.
"That seems a bit stiff." I retorted. "You get busted playing with your phone and a parent has to retreive it?"
"Well...not if it isn't the first time." He said. He then continued, "I got caught with my IPod in school too. So it's the second time I've been caught with electronics...so you have to go and get it."
I refused. I let him know it wasn't cool to be playing with electronics at school. He has enough trouble focusing anyway. Let alone with distractions. He had to wait until the following Wednesday to have his mom get his phone.
The following Saturday I picked him up from his mom's again and brought him home. I ran off to work and came back 9 hours later to discover him at the computer with a downtrodden look on his face. I walked past him and into the kitchen. On the counter sat a bowl full of uncooked rice. I could see the phone case beside the bowl of rice.
How absolutely expected!
He let me know that a kid pushed him into a swimming pool with the phone in his pocket. Sterling forgot his new phone was in his pocket and he stayed in the pool longer than he would have if he remembered there was a smart phone in his pocket. The phone was shot. There was no amount of rice that would fix that phone.
He was the owner of the Ferrari of phones for a total of 10 days before he destroyed it. Actually, if you take into account the amount of time the phone was at school and not in his possession, he would have been the owner of the Ferrari of phones for 4 days.
This is where I laughed at him. This is where I reminded him that he refuses to take care of his possessions.
He told me the parents of the kid that pushed him in the pool offered to have the kid pay for the new phone. That was cool, if it's true. Sterling asked me if I thought his mom would be pissed when she found out that the new phone was destroyed. I told him yes.
I think Sterling will be forced to get the Ford P.O.S of phones this time around.
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