As I approached the playground sandbox, I spotted my six- year-old marching away from it with purpose. My husband followed close behind. “We’ll find it!” he proclaimed.
“Find what?” I asked.
“The ball! We don’t know where it went,” my husband responded. Oops.
“I, uh, gave it away,” I admitted.
My husband stopped. “You what?”
“Gave it away?” I said, even more sheepishly.
By now, my son comprehended what I did. “Nooooooo!”
“Well, you know how it’s like the Fraggle song about the pebble. When you get something good, you pass it on!” I referenced an obscure Christmas Muppets movie as I tried to make some kind of excusable recovery from my mistake.
“But you didn’t ask!” my son pointed out. Busted.
“You’re right. I didn’t ask and that was wrong,” I confessed. “I’m sorry.”
I’d say I didn’t know what I was thinking when I gave the ball away, but that would be a cop-out. I knew exactly what I was thinking. Unfortunately, what I was thinking didn’t reflect well on me.
Rewind to ten minutes earlier. My kids were running around like banshees in the grass as we finished off fried Oreos and lemonade at a local Fourth of July celebration. An older couple behind us were clearly enjoying their antics. The man pulled out a small green and white inflatable ball, the type that local businesses often give away at these type of events. He started tossing it back and forth with my kids.
As we were getting ready to move on to the playground, he said, “You can keep it,” referring to the ball. Not wanting to keep said ball, I attempted to gracefully refuse. “Thanks so much, but that’s okay.”
He didn’t take the hint. “We just got it for free over there,” he said, waving his hand in the general direction of the sponsoring business booths.
“I really appreciate it, but we have so many at home already,” I replied, truly grateful for their generosity but not wanting to add to the pile of stuff at our house.
“No, really, you take it,” his wife said, smiling. Clearly, there was no turning down this act of generosity. We kept the ball.
A few minutes later over at the playground, I was watching my older son on a teeter totter when I spotted a little girl, probably two years old, eyeing the ball in my hand. I had two thoughts: 1) I’m already sick of carrying this ball around and 2) My kids won’t even notice it’s gone. The first thought was pure selfishness and the second thought is the type any parent will realize paves the road to hell. Ignoring my instincts, I said to the mom, “Do you want the ball?”
She looked much more genuinely grateful than I was and said, “Sure!”
Right after I handed it over, I had a flash of insight and mumbled to myself, “My kids are going to kill me when they find out I gave it away.”
The other mom asked, “Are you sure we can have it?”
At that point the little girl was holding it and I wasn’t going to take back from a toddler, so I quickly said, “Uh, no, you keep it. I’m sure.”
The moment of truth occurred about two minutes later.
After apologizing, I said to my older son, “Let’s go see if we can find another one.” We headed off to the booths to see if they had any balls left. As we walked, I apologized again and said that I would be more considerate of my kids’ feelings in the future.
Of course, it being late in the day, there was not a ball to be found. In fact, none of the people working the booths had any idea who was giving them away. Total failure. The mom guilt was eating me alive. The only redeeming result was that we picked up free glow necklaces from the Roy Rogers’ booth, of all places.
Having did what we could, we ended our journey at the tiny petting zoo they had. As my son petted the goats, I tried to let go of my mistake. After all, the more I focused on it, the worse he felt.
I can’t say I’m glad I made that decision now – it was really inconsiderate – but I think we got out of it all we could. While he doesn’t really need reminding of the fact, he saw that adults make mistakes too. More importantly, he saw me apologize. At first, it was a poor excuse for a non-apology. But then once I faced up to my mistakes, I gave a genuine “I’m sorry,” found a way to try to make the situation better (tried to get a new ball) and prevent a similar problem in the future (better respect their things). Last of all, it reminded me that kids will forgive you if you let them. Once he got over his initial disappointment at not finding a new one, I didn’t hear about the ball the rest of the day.
On one hand, I kind of hope he forgets about this incident, remembering only the bounce houses and fireworks of the day. On the other, I hope he did absorb those lessons from my mistake, which will serve him much better in the long-run than any amount of temporary fun would.
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