Them's Fightin' Words

We finally got word from the Court regarding the attempted theft of Mason's laptop back in January. The transcripts of the correspondence follow, as a scan of the letters wouldn't be very readable (Hello blurs photos, and is even worse with type). Besides, then I'd have to find a way to cross out his name, as he's a juvenile and I don't wish to invite legal trouble.

Some words of warning: if you don't like lies, don't read the apology letter. And if you don't like sarcasm, don't read my reply to the Court.

Cover letter

As part of their Teen Court sentence, many offenders are required to write letters of apology. Enclosed is a letter that (name deleted) has written regarding an incident that happened on January 19, 2005. You do not need to do anything other than read the letter, but if you should have comments or questions please do not hesitate to contact me at the above address and phone.

Sincerely,
(name deleted)
Teen Court Coordinator

The Letter of Apology

Dear Mason Kilner and Parents,

I am writing to you to apologize about the events that took place the day you thought your laptop had been stolen from the Mid High. I picked up the laptop when I found it on the floor of the cafeteria and Mason was no longer there, thinking that it was lost. I am sorry that I didn’t go to the office immediately to turn it in to lost and found. I now know that I should have taken the time to return it before I went to my next class. Please believe me when I tell you that I never intended to keep the laptop.

Since this day, I have had a number of challenges to deal with such as five days of ISS, my grades dropping dramatically as a result of ISS, and having to quit baseball in order to bring my grades back up. I also have never had any experience that has made me deal with the Juvenile Probation System or Court System. This also affected my entire family. I never want to have to go through anything like this again.

I take responsibility for causing your panic and frustration, and know that it was my laziness and not making the right choices that day that caused these problems. I am sorry. I regret the whole incident and hope that you will forgive me.

Sincerely,
(name deleted, since he’s a juvenile)



My response

Re: (name deleted)'s letter of apology

Dear Ms (court officer),

Oh, where to begin?

Firstly, I’m assuming that the Court has retained a copy of this letter, so that you can share my joy in seeing that our last name has been misspelled. (First rule of a formal apology... get the name right.)

I wish that someone at the Court had contacted us, as most of what (he) has written in his letter to exonerate himself is patently and completely untrue. Not only is there video from the cafeteria to refute his claim that he ‘found’ the laptop, but there is at least one girl who witnessed him take the laptop (ask at the Mid High, I’m sure they can provide you with the name of the girl who turned him in and claimed the hundred-dollar reward we had to offer to get someone to come forward with his name). Additionally, when it was announced that the laptop was missing, and he, er, found it, why didn’t he turn it over to a teacher immediately and proclaim his innocence then? He certainly found the time to pass it off to a friend to carry for him.

I received a frantic phone call from Mason shortly after the laptop was taken. I called my husband, who was at home, and we both converged on the Mid High to start to search... trash bins, outlying areas of the courtyard, under stairwells... anywhere we could think of that might hold a laptop and its case. We heard the PA announcements and waited, hoping. No one came forward.

We offered a hundred dollar reward, and continued our search, this time inside the building. We were looking in the bathrooms near (his) classroom when the female student came forward with his name, and we stood to one side, just outside the door, as he was removed from his class. We heard what he said about the boy he passed it to: "I wasn’t gonna carry that thing around all day." So he had time to pass it to a friend, but no time to turn it in to anyone in authority? Even handing it over to his third block teacher would have made him look more innocent than passing it to a friend to lug around for him until they could meet up after school and decide who got to keep it.

The friend he passed it to also had ample opportunity to turn in the laptop after the announcement was made concerning its state of unknown whereabouts. There were no witnesses to him taking it, so if he were to just pop out of his seat after that first announcement and say he found it laying somewhere, no one would have been the wiser. But again, neither one of them did something even remotely resembling what one would do if he were innocent and had merely found a valuable item.

I am generally a kindhearted person, and very forgiving; I’d prefer to believe that one can make mistakes and learn from them, and that all persons go about their lives with the best of intentions. When the evidence of something to the contrary is glaring at me and breathing right in my face, however, I must adjust my Pollyanna view and realize that some people, at some times, do the wrong thing, the dishonest thing, and for all the wrong reasons.

(He) committed a felony. Pure and simple. What you’ve chosen to do with that child with the dishonest tendencies is, apparently, out of our hands. What you do need to know, in dealing with him, is that he’s compounded his crime by lying, both to you and to us, in a very transparent attempt to exonerate himself. Yes, he made a mistake. Yes, he was caught. From the words (he) wrote to us, it seems the only mistake (he) thinks he made was in getting caught, and is now trying to lie his way to a lighter punishment. He must have known you either hadn’t talked to us yet or that you had no intention of doing so before his sentence was handed down.

We incurred a loss here, regardless of the laptop being returned. In order to get the name of the thief before school was out for the day, we had to offer money. I lost two hours of pay. The laptop was damaged and had to be sent back for repair; the DVD drive no longer functioned, the cooling fan stopped working that same evening, and the hard drive quit the very next day. Luckily, it was still under warranty and the manufacturer, while stating that it was due to improper handling of the laptop, repaired all of the damaged parts free of charge. Still, I had to bear the cost of sending it back for those repairs. Is there anything in place for reimbursement for these expenses? Or do we have to bear the cost ourselves because (he) claims he made an error in judgment?

I’d love to do as he asks and forgive the boy for making a bad, dishonest decision as young people sometimes do. But first, he has to ‘fess up to his lack and own his mistake and the punishment that follows. He hasn’t done so in this letter. Forgiveness follows repentance, and I’m not seeing any of that here.

Please call me at your earliest convenience. I’d really like to discuss this in more depth with an officer of the Court.

Sincerely,


Stephanie Kisner

Grrrrr.....

- posted by Stephanie @ 4:29 AM

 
Something Twisted This Way Comes


Luck? Spirit guide? Guardian angel? Whatever you call it, mine’s definitely got a kink in it somewhere.

Most people, when they have battery trouble with a car, just have a worn out old thing that won’t hold a charge any more.

Me, I get the positive terminal falling out of the battery and the battery cable dangling uselessly inside the engine compartment. With the positive terminal still attached to the cable and a great big empty on the battery where said terminal post used to reside.

Now, I could look at this two ways: bad luck that it happened at all, or good luck that it happened while the car was in my garage on my day off when I was going out to warm up the heater before I took Mason to school.

It could have broken off the night before, when Ed was driving back from the far side of Albuquerque in a rainstorm. It didn’t.

It could have broken loose after I’d started it and we’d gotten under way, shutting down my totally computerized car in morning rush hour traffic. Again, it didn’t.

It could have waited for me to start my errands (bank, drop off electric bill, drop off water bill, return something at Target, go to Sam’s Club for gas and dog treats, then finally to Super Walmart for the bulk of the grocery shopping) and leave me stranded somewhere. Or cut out when I was driving down the long curving hill (with the 55 mph speed limit) that takes me to Sam's and SuperWallyWorld. I'd have had no brakes and no power steering. Once again, none of that happened.

It got Ed home just fine Sunday night, then simply refused to start Monday morning. Running late for school, we just took the other car, leaving me to investigate the inactive new car when I got back home.

Ed was up when I got back, and the first thing we did was check the battery connection. One light bump to the cable was all it took to send a shower of plastic fragments to the concrete floor of the garage and to leave the positive terminal of the battery dangling in the battery cable.

Did you know that, no matter what the guaranteed life of the battery (in this case, 6 years), the warranty on a factory-installed came-with-the-car battery ceases to exist once a new car is out of its bumper-to-bumper warranty period? I didn’t. No pro rata for me from the manufacturer (AC Delco), nor from the dealer. Even though the stupid casing rotted apart.

I could see if it wouldn’t hold a charge and they thought I’d abused the battery or something. But no. The little green eye indicator on the top showed a good charge. And I could swear I heard it humming the nanny-nanny-boo-boo song at me. ‘Cause it had a full charge and I had a car that needed the power, and no way to get the two of them together.

For some people, good luck is bad things never happening at all, and they get to go blissfully through life, never knowing about the awful things that almost happened but didn’t.

For me, good luck (or a watchful guardian) means that the bad things gotta happen, but they’ll happen under the best, least harmful of circumstances. I still learn the lesson that the bad occurrence had to teach me, but with the least amount of damage.

I’d rather think of it as good luck with a twist.
- posted by Stephanie @ 9:42 PM

 
Some Thoughts on Dusting

First, a little sideways thought: Shouldn’t that be undusting? I mean, my house is already dusty enough on its own; why would I want to take on a task that’d make it even dustier?

All the painting inside the house (Mason’s room is the only one left) has shown me just how much dust lurks in overlooked places. Like the baseboards behind the furniture, the top of doorframes, and that layer of silt on my doorbell was just plain gross. I’m not a tall person, so that’s my excuse for those hard-to-reach places, but I can’t think of one good reason why I’ve neglected those baseboards. Lots of bad ones, yeah, but not one really good one. (If anyone can come up with a really good one, I’m asking you to share...)

Now, on to my revelation.

I’ve decided to dust my house with the television set.

Damn near every speck of dust within a ten-foot radius gets sucked to the thing and glues itself on, so this seems like it would be the most efficient tool in my cleaning armature. Nothing in the world holds dust like a TV screen. Except maybe ceiling fans. But they’re too hard to take down.

Nope, I’ll take the twenty-seven inch flatscreen Swiffer on steroids. It’s far more portable.

Now, I admit, it won’t be the easiest thing to lug around, but I’ve got strong arms. And then maybe the house’d be dust-free for more than an hour.

Haven’t figured out how I’m gonna get it close enough to the ceiling fans to do a thorough job, but there’s gotta be a way...
- posted by Stephanie @ 4:19 PM

 
After Four Years of Looking

I've finally been handed the nickname for our president that is absolutely perfect. At least in my opinion. Feel free to disagree. At least know this: now you won't have any doubts as to where my politics lie (lay? I never could remember that rule. Is it 'people lie and stuff lays'? So then what does politics do? Oh, the hell with correct grammer, I think lie is more accurate.).

Anway, I'm gonna call the prez G-Boo.

Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

(Kudos and other assorted credit goes to comedienne Carol Liefer)
- posted by Stephanie @ 11:36 AM

 
A Really Stupid Thing Made Me Happy This Week


Finding Saran Wrap.

This might sound really dumb, but it truly did make me smile. See, I’m plastic-wrap impaired and am forever fighting with the stuff to keep it from wadding up. Why does it stick to itself so well but never to the bowl or plate? Anyway, the new Saran Wrap package comes with this tiny little paper cutter thingy that just zips across the wrap and lets it stay flat while you cut the piece from the rest of the roll. So I can pull the wrap out, stretch it across the bowl first, and then cut it off and it actually will be useful the first time. No more throwing out a wad or three before I get one that cooperates. The cutter looks like an itty-bitty Exacto blade, just like the one in my paper cutter on my desk. So add ‘package of Sara Wrap’ to the list of other sharp and potentially lethal things (like nail clippers) that you can’t take on an airplane.
- posted by Stephanie @ 10:47 PM