We've all likely seen the joke about the "bad" sign before. I got one of those the other day in the form of lined paper taped to my storm door. The handle of the door was covered in scotch tape and the sign read, reassuringly to the writer's thinking I'm sure, "CAN BE USED!" Oh my. While I had run to the store for some milk (where do they put all that milk?) the older two boys had gotten into an argument and in the process, my door handle had been ripped apart. Rightly concerned that they would be in trouble for wonton destruction of my house, they pieced the parts they could find back together and taped the knob and said letter up.I took a deep breath and made a decision. This was a teaching moment... for ALL of us.
Dear Self;
Lesson 1 - Isn't that just the way we do things in life as adults too. When we've messed something up and don't want to right it, we hang labels on it; "still works, mostly," "almost good," "well worn in", "just a small case of ___". Who are we kidding.
Lesson 2 - They don't need you to be angry about the expense and the work. SHOW them.
Lesson 3 - You wanted boys. Congratulations. Along with the fun parts comes this kind of stuff. Toughen up, cookie! You'll laugh later... probably...
Dear Kids;
Lesson 1 - Somethings have to be fixed and
not with scotch tape. Some things take "I'm sorry", some take a monetary investment and some require time and TLC.
Lesson 2 - Confession is good for the soul. Don't blame each other. It doesn't help at all.
Lesson 3 - Elbow grease goes a long way toward fixing things.
The sordid details were sorted out - all of the who, whats and wheres - and it was decided that they owed me some time off (for real) and to fix the handle themselves. On a trip to Lowe's they found out that door handles like that cost $10 or two hours worth of work in the form of babysitting. They learned that putting the handle back together while keeping the cats out of the house wasn't as easy as they imagined. They also stayed home together for those two hours without tearing anything else up, allowing me to head out early to a ladies conference at our church. I'm sure that won't be the last time things are broken in my house - it is almost a daily occurrence - but I'm hopeful that it is the last time the door handles will be ripped off.
