So, to my story. Let's call the mom in this story "Sandi," and let's call her son "Kyle". The way Sandi tells it runs something like this, or at least it would if she had my narrative style:
Kyle came into the house really excited the other day, because he had found a perfectly good [some kind of fancy iPhone or something, I don't remember the brand name] in the parking lot at Target. And he thought this was just great because he's been pestering me for a new cell phone for months, and it hadn't gotten him anywhere. He told me there wasn't anything wrong with the phone, except that it didn't have a SIM card -- but it was a Verizon phone just like ours. So he took the SIM card out of his old phone and put it into the one he'd found, and it worked great.
I asked to see it, and he happily handed it over for my admiration. I opened the phone book, and there was this long list of somebody else's contacts that I knew weren't Kyle's -- people like, say, "Tia Francesca." You should have seen his face when I said, "Okay, Kyle, here's what we have to do -- we have to call these people and find out whose phone this is so that we can give it back to them."
For a moment he was literally speechless, and then he said, "It's my phone! I found it!"
"No, honey, it's not your phone; it's somebody else's phone, and we have to give it back to them."
"But I found it!!"
"Look, Kyle," I told him, "it's just the Golden Rule. If this was your phone, and you were the one that had lost it, and somebody else found it, wouldn't you want them to call you and say, 'Hey, I found your phone'?"
He just glared at me.
"Of course you would. So that's what you have to do for the person who did lose it."
Well, he was not happy, but he didn't put up a fight, and I called up "Tia Francesca" to start trying to return the phone, which was complicated because Tia Francesca didn't speak any English...but anyway, here's where it gets interesting.
That was on a Thursday night. On Friday night I carelessly set my company BlackBerry down in a restaurant after getting a late text from a co-worker, and forgot all about it until the next morning. I called the restaurant...and nobody had turned in a phone. It was gone. And it wasn't even my own phone I had lost.
I was pretty upset, obviously, but at the same time, what a great lesson for Kyle! So I looked at Kyle and said, "Wouldn't it be nice if whoever found that phone in the restaurant, would start going through my contacts and calling people until they found me? Because otherwise I'm going to have to pay my company for that phone and we'll be out $400 or so."
[giggling] Kyle just rolled his eyes and looked kind of embarrassed, because really, what's he going to say?
I even added, "Well, maybe God will honor our faithfulness: we tried to do the right thing, and He knows that; so maybe He'll make sure the person calls us back."
That was, I suppose, unwise, and I'm afraid that by Saturday evening it had sunk in on all of us that the person who "found" my phone was taking exactly the same attitude that Kyle had taken. And I was pretty upset about it, because we don't have a lot of money right now. So I started complaining about it, and then tried to catch myself and stop. But I couldn't help but tell Kyle, "See, you know why I made you call those people to give the phone back? It's because you don't want to be like the person who stole my phone, do you? Do you?!" [Sandi's "Do you?!" is spoken in that This-Is-A-Statement-Not-Really-A-Question voice every mom seems to possess]
And again, really, what's he going to say?
Well, we went to church on Sunday, and I was still really upset about the phone, but you know how church reminds you that you need to pray about things, not be mad about them? Yeah, so I said, "Okay, Lord, I really can't afford to pay for that BlackBerry. So please convict the heart and conscience of the person who stole it, so that he'll decide to give it back to me. But if that's not Your plan, that's fine. Either way, please help me stop worrying about it."
About 2:00 that afternoon, the home phone rang, and some woman whose voice wasn't familiar asked, "Is this Kyle Penders?"
I told her, "No, Kyle's outside; this is his mom."
"Oh," the lady answered, "then I think you're the person I want to talk to...are you Sandi Penders?"
"Um..ye-e-s."
"Then I think I have your phone."
Turns out her son had come up to her that afternoon and given her the phone and said, "Hey, mom, I found this phone at Chili's." And she had started going through the contact list looking for people who might be close relatives.
She told me she lived close to Chili's and would just drop it off there that afternoon. So when Kyle came in I told him, "Guess what...?"
And sure enough, that evening I swung by Chili's, and they had my phone. I came back to the house and Kyle was sitting at the kitchen table. He asked, "Did you get your phone?" and I answered, "Yes."
Then he looked down at the table and grinned and said, "So I guess there's something you want to say to me..."
I laughed and said, "I don't think I have to," and that was the end of the conversation.
I just think that's the most delightful story of how one kid learned a proverbial Lesson He'll Never Forget.
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