Campfyre Stories

I have a smart teenager, too smart sometimes.  I have a lazy teenager (more than the inherent teen laziness, he grew from a lazy child).  I have an entitled teenager, formerly an entitled child.  I have a fully secretive teenager.

Who skipped school on Friday.

Which wouldn’t be so bad overall, except that his excuse was incredibly flimsy and that he got busted when Chaos randomly stopped by and caught him out.

Chaos:  Oh, no school today?
Spawn:  Nope.
Chaos:  *thinking*  Is it a holiday?
Spawn:  No.
Chaos:  *thinking harder*  Parent-Teacher conferences?
Spawn:  No.
Chaos:  Then why are you here?

See, Spawn’s excuse here is that somehow, the school was locked at 8:20, when he got there.  So he assumed that school was closed because it was COLD.  And, you know, I *might* have believed him, had it not been for the fact that I’m 99% sure that he never actually left the house.

Since this was an issue that spanned both households, Dragonmaker and I wound up presenting a united front, so he’s grounded at both houses.  This is a first for us, since it’s usually a situation where what happens at one house/with one parent stays there, but since this crossed lines, so does the grounding.

I can’t help but think that we’re being a little harder on him than he deserves, but he’s accepting the entire thing.  That Libra sense of justice didn’t react in outrage when we laid down the punishment, although he claims that it was not calculated, despite signs to the contrary.

I think that, probably, what we’re really punishing him for is not skipping school, but doing such a bad job of covering his ass.  I mean, really, Chaos even handed him the perfect excuse (he still would have been caught, but it would have been a *plausible* lie).  He also left the door unlocked, the heat turned up to 70 (!!) and ate pretty much all the food in the house.  I’m not sure if he’s just that inexperienced or if he honestly didn’t even think to cover his tracks.

The reason that I am as angry as I am is because of the timing.  Had I not taken Spawn out the night before for a celebratory dinner (my new job and his making honor roll, again), I probably would be a lot more laid back about the whole thing.  However, because I had gone out of my way for him the night before he did this, I feel slapped.

But the real problem with the entire situation is that by punishing Spawn, both Dragonmaker and I wind up punished and, to some extent, inconvenienced.  For example, movies are out for the next two weeks, but you know, I was just as much looking forward to seeing Ghost Rider as Spawn was.  He can’t go to friends’ houses, either, so Dragonmaker needing to go out of town on a school-related function leaves him with significantly fewer options than he would ordinarily have.  Also, when pressed for time, ordering take-out or drive-thru dinner is off the table, for the moment.  Punishment for Spawn, highly inconvenient to his parents.  Unfortunately, it also means that one of his closest friends is all but grounded as well, since he spends much of his free time with Spawn.

*sigh*  Not to mention the fact that his grounding falls during a school vacation, which led me to suggest a parole hearing in one week.  While I do think that two weeks is excessive (for the single offense, not as much when the unrelated, but surrounding circumstances are taken into consideration), I think that the point needs to be made whereby he feels the effects of punishment in both households.

But, really, I don’t like being put in this position.  If he had gotten caught and copped to it, probably it wouldn’t even be a thing.  We even gave him the opportunity to cop to it, but he stood by his flimsy, translucent story and accepted his punishment with grace and without argument (cementing my feeling that he deserved what he got, if not more).

Ah, well, I’m sure this is just the beginning.