Postcards from the Funny Farm

Last weekend my 8 year old son and I had a male bonding moment, we picked out and bought watches together at KMART. His was a fancy electronic one, mine was my usual traditional timex with “Georgia” font numbers. When we got home I really enjoyed going through the manual with him, showing him how to set the time and date, and even the alarm. I thought it was so cool that my son had his first real watch. I’ll never forget when I got mine. It was also electronic, and it had a stopwatch and I thought that was incredible. Well, as they say, every rose has its thorn. When I came home from work a couple days ago, my son was up in his room and my wife explained to me he was grounded, waiting for me to get home because he lost his watch.

What follows is his excuse:

“Dad, it fell out of my desk at school onto the floor and my friend picked it up for me and he says he has it and he is going to bring it tomorrow.”

My response was. “Watches are material things, they are not important in the big picture . . . we can get another one for you. What I am concerned about is whether or not you are lying to us.”

“Dad, I’m not lying.” was his reply.

Today he is supposed to bring the watch home. What do you think is going to happen? I will follow up on this real-time event in the comments of this post. Are you on the edge of your seat? I know I am! Here’s thirteen possibilities (some silly, cuz 13 is a lot!) of what I imagine the truth could be in honor of it being “Thirsday Thirteen:”

1. It’s the truth
2. It’s a form of the truth
3. He knows where the watch is but made up a whopper (would explain the surety)
4. He loaned it to his friend and is afraid to admit that (he does that a lot with his things and they never come back)
5. The teacher took it away for a day when he was playing with it.
6. He doesn’t know where it is but is going to look for it and his story bought him time.
7. He left it somewhere on campus and is going to check the lost and found.
8. He never brought it to school, but loaned it to someone he walks home with and will ask for it back today
9. He broke the face glass on it and is afraid to tell us.
10. He gave it to a girl he likes?
11. He didn’t fasten it on his wrist correctly and it fell off.
12. He sold it.
13. He donated it to charity

It’s gotta be one of these . . . ah the joys and excitement of fatherhood. This afternoon will be interesting.