It Wasn’t My Fault

“It wasn’t my fault!” If you’re a parent, this is a phrase you have heard quite often. When they’re small it can be kind of cute.  After all, it wasn’t Goalielocks or the Mayor’s fault they spilled all the toothpaste and put toothpaste footprints all over the upstairs. Of course, it was entirely their fault given there was no toothpaste fairy that squeezed the toothpaste all over the floor.  Unfortunately, the plethora of sweet, minty, stick and blue footprints led to a hole in a wall as my hubby realized the scope of the issue.

Now that they’re older it isn’t as cute.  Moreover, it’s super important that they understand that it was indeed their fault.  My son’s phone rang in the middle of class courtesy of spammer.  Unfortunately, he had forgotten to turn of the ringer, so his teacher confiscated the phone for the remainder of the day. In fact, the school’s policy prohibits him from collecting the phone at dismissal.  Nope that would just be too simple and let the kids off to easy.

At this point,  I was at work running from meeting to meeting.  I just taken on a new role at work, so needless to say I’m quite busy. His friend text me to tell me that his phone had been confiscated for ringing.  Naively I assumed he would be able to pick it up as he left school that day.  Interestingly enough he never told me via his friend’s phone that we would have to be the ones to recover said phone.

I called the school once I saw he was on the bus without his phone.  The front office staff was incredibly sweet and helpful.  She called the teacher, but was unable to reach her via phone.  Consequently, she tried to page her, but to no avail.  Finally, she sent someone to check the classroom as the teacher hadn’t turned in a phone.  When she came back on the line, she informed me they had found the phone in the teacher’s classroom. 

The teacher had left with my son’s iPhone 8 sitting out in the open.  I’m a little peeved about that because I don’t think the teacher nor the school would have paid for a new phone had his been stolen.  Oh and the only way to get it was for us to pick it up.  Now I’m just aggravated.  His school is neither close to home nor close to work for either of us. This had become quite the pain in the arse.

We were finally able to collect the phone around 6:40 pm.  Curiously, if I hadn’t called the school, we may not have known we (the parents) had to pick up the phone.  We started talking about the situation and the old refrain came up “it wasn’t my fault.”  His argument was he couldn’t control when the spammer called.  Of course, his argument did not consider the fact he had forgotten to put his phone on silent.  Had he put his phone on silent as he does every other morning, he wouldn’t have had it taken away.  At the end of the day, it wasn’t the end of the world, but he needed to take accountability for his actions or in this case inactions.  Fortunately, he caught on pretty quickly, which brought an end to the lecture.

Tonight’s song performed by Shaggy (and apropos to tonight’s title) is “It Wasn’t Me.”