I am a trusting person. Usually to the point that I get taken advantage of. I just don’t see the point of assuming the worst and hoping to be proven wrong. But sometimes, no matter how much you want to believe the best, all evidence points to what you don’t want to see.
Just before the kids went back to school after the holidays, they had a few friends over. (Three of them are the kids of my coffee neighbor who moved. It was great to see them again.) The other two are neighborhood kids that I have known since they moved in about 4 years ago. So, all of the kids (Do the math- my 3 + my friends 3 + 2 neighbors = chaos) were playing in the playroom. I could see everyone and they were behaving. Two of the boys were playing Zarek’s gameboy. I watched to see who had it and when. The last boy to play with it was the neighborhood boy. (Everyone saw him with it last.) When it was time to go and everyone left, guess what was missing?
If you guessed the Gameboy along with the Gameboy bag with about 20 games, you would be right.
I have searched this house top to bottom looking for it. I have torn the house apart hoping to find it. Neighbor-boy claims he didn’t have it. Says he wasn’t the last one with it. (Lie #1)
Do you know how much I want to believe him?
Do you also know how much I want to chase the little booger down and search his house?
So here is the deal. I can report it and file a theft report pointing the finger at this kid and thus ruining the neighbor relationship forever as well as knowing we are opening ourselves up to the vandalism etc that we know this kid is capable of. OR I just totally cut ties with the family anyway and chalk it up as a “damn we got burned by that punk.”
We will replace the Gameboy for Zarek. That isn’t as much the issue as the fact that he feels violated and hurt by it. My trust in a CHILD (He is 8) has been shattered. I opened my home up to these kids and they stole from us.
And then, in the back of my overtrusting mind I begin to worry that maybe he didn’t take it and it is still somewhere in the house and we overlooked it. (Granted, that means that someone would have had to hide it while they were here.) I hate thinking the worst, but is there really any other option.
What would you do? Report it to the police or deal with it on your own?
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