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Maybe your son is real tired from all the work he's been doing lately? You say he's 20 so he must have a hard labor intensive job while he's attending college, right? Sounds like you need to give the hard working future Physicist a break. He was probably at the library late working on a project with his lab partner from school. Lighten up a little bit.
At least you got me to laugh today and I thank you for that, it was a good laugh too.
The reason why I'm really upset with my 20 year old son right now is because my lawn needs mowing pretty bad. I been on him all week about getting that done because my lawn really needs it and it looks the worst of the yards all around me. I been on 12 hour night shifts this week 7:00pm to 7:00am, so when I get home its off to bed for me. Since I'm off tonight until Monday, I got everything out and ready for him to do the lawn before I went to bed and I also spoke with him and let know that everything was ready and he needed to get that done this morning. I got up around 1:00 and the yard still looks like nobody lives at 181. So, I asked what is going on with the yard and why its not done or at least started yet. He lends the lawn mower to his friend 4 houses down the street, so I really cant believe what I'm hearing from him. I asked him to run that by me one more time and he said his friend wanted to use it right quick and said he will bring it right back. I wont say what all I told him but it amounts to you had better go get it now. Just got the thing out of the shop on Monday and he know I been on him all week. I really don't like lending my lawn mower and especially to people I don't know anything about. Now its 2:40pm and the yard still is not cut and no signs of him or the lawn mower. Am I making too much of a big deal about this or I just need to calm down ?
Okay. First thing's first. If your twenty-year-old is living at home, then he has duties. If your son isn't earning his own scratch, you have two forms of leverage:
a) Money
b) Car keys
If he can't fulfill his basic obligations, the money train stops.
And here's the thing. People confuse an adult with a grown-up. Being an adult is just a biological stage of life. Being a grown-up is having a sense of responsibility, not just acting as a consumer of other people's resources and time.
Oh, and never lend out your lawnmower. My wife let our across-the-street neighbor use ours once. The woman proceeded to run it over a stump which, in turn, broke the drive on the thing. She just blithely wheeled it back into my garage and never said a word. I discovered it broken the next weekend and wanted to walk over there and confront it. But MrsCPG said, "I don't want to lose a friend over this." Some friend.
Did he go get it yet? He either needs to bring it back now or pay for you to go buy a new one. I would have been killed and buried in the backyard if I had ever loaned out something belonging to my parents without permission. And, I was the one responsible for mowing the lawn at the house and all their rental properties around town so it would have been easy, albeit life-threatening, to do.
I've been through that. Adult kids who haven't left home and some who have get the impression somewhere that everything in the household is "ours" when it comes to parents' things. Of course what they buy is just theirs. They think even the house is theirs and they can invite people in without asking the parents.
Neighbors help out neighbors, at least in my world. We borrow, they borrow, it all evens out.
Tell your son to get the lawn mowed this weekend, and let it go.
My problem is -- I never borrow and one time my son "lent" out a carpet cleaner to a family where the mother and her boyfriend would spend her welfare check at the casino and they lived off welfare handouts. They found out I had stuff and kept wanting to borrow things -- but they didn't want to give the carpet cleaner back because they weren't done with it and figured they should keep it until they got around to finishing it. My kid had the gall to tell me I should want to help poor people. Poor lazy people who didn't think they should have to work for anything. I had to set my son straight and remind him I work hard for what I have and if they want things, they need to get off their lazy rear ends and get jobs.
My problem is -- I never borrow and one time my son "lent" out a carpet cleaner to a family where the mother and her boyfriend would spend her welfare check at the casino and they lived off welfare handouts. They found out I had stuff and kept wanting to borrow things -- but they didn't want to give the carpet cleaner back because they weren't done with it and figured they should keep it until they got around to finishing it. My kid had the gall to tell me I should want to help poor people. Poor lazy people who didn't think they should have to work for anything. I had to set my son straight and remind him I work hard for what I have and if they want things, they need to get off their lazy rear ends and get jobs.
And, how often is that the norm in your world? It isn't in mine.
I'd be more annoyed if a neighbor let their grass grow a foot tall than having a lawn mower lent out.
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