June/July

Seth is a huge Nitro Circus fan. He would really like a dirt bike to practice his own stunts, but he is only allowed to get a dirt bike if he earns the money himself. When he found out they cost around $1,000, he got very excited. He was given some ideas to earn money. For example, sell eggs from our chickens or sell golf balls to golfers passing by. When he found out that he was only going to make a few dollars from each dozen eggs and less than that for a dozen golf balls, he was not happy anymore. Apparently he thought fresh eggs and used golf balls sold for a lot more than they do.

We were camping over Memorial Day weekend when he came up to me on Sunday morning and said, “Dad, isn’t it cool that I now have $60 more toward getting a dirt bike?” I was confused. “What? Where did you find it?” I asked.

He replied by saying, “I was just down the dirt road and I saw $60 all folded up in the weeds.” When he was telling me what he had found, I could tell he was hesitant and wondering if telling me was a bad idea that would backfire on him.

What Seth didn’t realize was that the day before, I had given his older sister, Kylee, $60 to drive into town for gas. Kylee had folded up the money and put it into her pocket, or so she thought. Just before she drove off, she checked her pocket for the money and found it was gone. We spent and an hour and a half searching for the money. She felt awful and we just decided it was long gone.

When Seth told us about the money, I was relieved; Kylee was really relieved. Seth did not want to give the money back and tried to plead his case to us. He said that he found it so it should be his, and it probably was not the money we lost, even though it was still folded exactly the same. In the end he was coerced into doing the right thing and gave the money back to me. He is still earning his bike money one dollar at a time.