Three out of the four of our children are very sociable. When they bring their friends out to the farm, it’s like an amusement park. Even though there are chores to do and animals to take care of, they embrace it and jump right in with the rest of our family. One of their favorite things to do is drive the four-wheelers and other equipment. This comes with a long lecture about respecting our property and taking care of it while using it. Children do not always listen the first time, this is often a lecture that must be given more than once. Sometimes resulting in a “ban” on riding four-wheelers because the rules have been broken.
Recently, our youngest son had a friend come over to spend the night. The two of them had baseball practice together one afternoon and football practice the following morning. They had a Monday off school and wanted to take full advantage of playing outside. They were on both four-wheelers and buzzing around the farm. Somehow, they got a hair-brained idea and they invented a game where you dismounted your 4-wheeler, and someone was trying to tag the other person to be “it” for the next round. When they were dismounting the four-wheelers, they were supposed to drop the keys nearby to make it more difficult just to hop back on a ride away. In the heat of the moment in what must have been a very exciting game, our son’s friend chucked the four-wheeler key into the middle of an open pasture.
I had called them all in for dinner and finally our oldest son came in and said, “they aren’t coming in for a while Mom, they are in the field trying to find the four-wheeler key. I told them not to come in until they found it.” I was completely bewildered, how on earth did this happen?
Later that evening, both seventh-grade boys came into the house to tell me what happened. It was so ridiculous I barely had words for them. I fed them dinner and sent them to bed. The next morning, I woke them up early for breakfast. They were then sent out to the field to continue looking. We enlisted the aid of a small metal detector and large rolling magnets. They looked and looked and had no success in finding the key.
I took them to their football practice and afterward picked them up to set about looking for the key again. It was getting hot and without a higher-powered metal detector or some eagle eyes, I did not think the boys were ever going to find that key. They were both remorseful and I made them confess to my husband what they had done. They were banned from the four-wheelers. Thankfully, we had a spare key and the code to get a second one remade in case we encountered this predicament again.
In the heat of the moment, preteen and teenage boys do not think about the consequences of their actions long-term. My husband will probably never stop giving this friend a hard time about his amazing throwing arm – which he showed off during their first junior high football game. I hope they learned a lesson about being more respectful of the equipment. More than anything – I hope they understand when they make mistakes, we will always be here to help them learn, neighbor.
