Make the Kid Take Responsibility
Violent Acres doesn’t take comments. She wrote a post today
CAUTION FOUL LANGUAGE HERE AND ON POST
Well, to make a long story short, my husband’s 8 year old son thought it would be a really good idea to smash out the windows of Mr. Hick’s beater truck. I’m not really going to go into the specifics as to what was done to the little hoodlum discipline-wise, but let’s just say that the kid is fucking lucky he’s not my son. As far as I’m concerned, he got off way too easy.
The truck is worthless, they offered the guy $300 for the damage, he wanted $500, but she doesn’t mention any involvement by the kid.
It seems like the kid should have at least tagged along and apologized. It’s hard to deal with drunks too. Tough situation to find yourself in.
I would set the beater truck on fire the next time the neighbor was shooting off fireworks. New Year’s Eve?
In all honesty..i would have called it quits when the drunk said Its fine and the truck was stuffed anyway! Really..would have smiled and said Thanks for understanding instead of pushing the issue of money! I would have pulled said stepkid over by his ear for an apology though!
Yes, I agree – the offer was enough. They should have quit while they were ahead. Raising stepkids must be really tough.
I would say that if he’s firm on the $500 that would be fine BUT that it’s going to take a LONG TIME for the kid to pay him back that amount. No matter how drunk you are your going to realize that if A KID is paying for the damage you aren’t going to get that much 😉
Really the kid should be working to pay off the damage. It’s the natural consequence of breaking someone else’s shit.
when he was sober he wanted nothing. when he was drunk he wanted 500. split the difference and offer him the 300. and do it while he’s sober. and make no mention of his drunken bumbling in your kitchen.
“Mr. Hick, we feel bad about damaging your property. Even though you said you didn’t need any reimbursment, we’d like to offer you 300 dollars. Since the truck is so old and damaged the blue book values it at practically nothing, but we thought this was fair.”
hopefully he’ll walk away happy with it. if he’s not happy with it, throw in a 6 pack and put up a fence.
@Amy: I don’t think the kid paying for the damage was ever in the equation. It was the Dad and step-mom making the payment.
@Sarah: As I read it, they made the offer once when he was sober and he refused. I would be inclined to ignore the drunken attempt. But with people like these as neighbor, you never know how it will escalate.
Options:
1. Call the local junkyards and try to find one that has the replacement windows for the truck.
2. Go to him sober, offer him $300 and GET A RECEIPT that acknowledges this is payment in full for the damage. Hell, pre-write it and bring it with you.
3. Offer him $300 (with receipt) plus the kid has to spend 6 hours some upcoming Saturday helping him clean up his yard (since presumably there is broken glass on the ground now. Good lesson for the boy, plus some extra on top of the financial compensation for Mr. Hick.
Those certainly are reasonable and prudent options. Which means they probably are entirely out of the question. 🙂
She brought this on herself, buy demanding te son do something to fix the situation. If the guy said over and over that it wasnt worth aything and it fell apart months ago, why would you keep pressing?
I agree, after one offer, I would have been outathere.