Well, this is fun. I have to keep reminding myself that as wonderful as children can be and as responsible as we think they often are, children are, at the end of the day, still children. I am the mother who tries not to get angry over mistakes. My girlfriend from the office stayed at my place one night and seemed a bit surprised to see my reaction when my daughter toppled over her glass of milk and smiled. My daughter confidently informed her, "It's ok. Accidents happen. Mommy won't get mad. We just have to clean it up". I've tried to live my life avoiding an incident over the small things. After all, children will be children, and they model after our behaviour and responses to situations.
Yesterday afternoon, my children were having a snack and I was sitting at the table with them, typing away on my laptop. My company laptop. My son was telling a story and in an excited moment, with one hand gesture, he knocked over the glass of milk. Milk spilled under the laptop, and the part that went flying, spilled into the keyboard. I lifted up my laptop only to find it dripping milk. The laptop turned off (naturally), and will not turn on again. Great, I think it's toast.
My son froze and then spoke up "Mommy- are you going to get fired for this?" Honestly, sometimes the things children think about are just amazing. Why a little child should fear losing his home is beyond me.
"No baby, I won't get fired, but I may get into a bit of trouble for this, because the office will have to get this fixed. Please be more careful next time, OK honey?". "Mommy, it was an accident", "I know baby, but sometimes accidents cause big problems, so we need to always be careful".
Perhaps I shouldn't have told him this, but he's 6 years old, and yes, although it is an accident, it will have consequences. I think consequences are important for children to understand. We can have a long debate on this one, but that's where I stand. He apologized, and I told him not to worry, and that we will try to see if I can get this fixed.
This takes me back to my last laptop mishap, when my son was about 3. I went to answer the telephone and he gleefully plucked all the keys and pegs out of my laptop. When I got off the phone, I was mortified to see what he had done. I had to put all the keys in a ziploc and take them into the office. When the tech guy asked me what happened I asked him if he wanted the truth or the lie. When he asked for truth, I told him what had happened. He chuckled and said, "I can't put that on the report to replace a $500 keyboard. Give me the lie". "Um, I dropped it?", "Good enough".
I'm not sure what I'm going to say to them this time. I mean, what will my colleagues say if they find out what happened? It's honestly a bit embarrassing, not to mention that my laptop hasn't been backed up on the server for over 2 weeks, so I will end up losing a lot of data. Either way, I'll have to find a way to get it into the office this week so I can have it up and running by the time I get back in. It's a major inconvenience to be without a computer, I mean, I'll feel like I'm in the dark ages again. Then again, perhaps it will be a nice way to end my last week away from the office. Maybe I'll just consider it silver lining. :-)
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