Monday, September 21, 2009

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Anna had a little friend stop by today. Her dad asked if she could play at our house while he went on a bike ride. "We are about to leave to go buy new ballet shoes, but she can stay a little while." He said he'd be back in 30 minutes.

While I was outside hanging a load of laundry, both Anna and Colin called me, "Mommy you need to come in right now!!!" Anna's friend had dumped half of the fish food into her tank.

This is potentially disastrous. It can cause nitrogen levels to rise and can kill fish. Anna was horrified, because she knew this had happened to another family we know. I got the net out and started scooping as much food out as I could, but it was flake food and dispersed pretty quickly. I rinsed out the filter and did a water change.

During this time the friend was no where to be found. She hid from us, and when Colin found her, she said she was going to leave and go home. "Don't go home! You need to wait until your dad gets here," I shouted her, since I couldn't see her.

Finally dad showed up. "We had a little problem. She spilled half of the fish food in Anna's tank." I told him.

"Huh," he said. "What kind of tank do you have? Yeah, I lost a whole bunch of fish when her little brother added soap to my tank a few years ago." Then he launched into a long description of his tank and problems he's had. Meanwhile his daughter snuck out behind me, jumped on her bike, and headed home. Finally I said, "We've got to go to the store!" and he said, "OK, well, do you want me to buy you a new filter or pay for more fish or something?"

Uh, no, but an apology would go a long way, dude! Or, how about talk to your daughter about how to behave when you go to someone else's house, or what to do when you make a mistake. It was certainly a long topic at our dinner table tonight!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, the lessons children have to learn -- sometimes at the expense of their friends! Hope your fish survive.
Love, Nana

grandad says said...

Oh man.

Hide the fish food.
Handcuff visiting children.
Buy salt water fish.
Keep a trunk monkey in the bedroom.

So sorry for the problem and yes, a sincere concerned apology would be nice.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm in shock.
Sorry you had to go through that.
T.

Anonymous said...

Hmm,Not very good at all,Jennifer, that Dad needs to learn manners first then he can teach his children! :(


A.Norma.

Emily said...

"I'm sorry" would have been the first thing out of my mouth! How could the father have overlooked that? The lack of basic manners is amazing.

Did the fish survive?

Unknown said...

ooooooooooooooooooooh, wow. As a new tank owner, I can just feel Anna's frustration and angst over her poor innocent fish! We had a similarly difficult playdate recently and I have learned that some children just cannot be allowed to be IN my house. Too many rules and consequences here. Little people are held ACCOUNTABLE! On these disastrous playdates, I relegate the boundary-oblivious children to the outdoors. And I try to remind myself what you seem to already know: in the wise words of those orange-faced oompah loompahs "blaming the kid is a lie and a shame, 'specially when you know who's to blame..."

Anonymous said...

The child obviously learned her bad manners from the father. If he hasn't learned to say he's sorry at his age, it doesn't look promising for the little girl. Shame. (Btw, does anyone else think it's kind of rude for a parent to go ahead and leave a child at someone's house after they've said they need to leave soon??)

Anonymous said...

...!!!! thought the same thing myself,Anonymous. :( I would be tempted to do the same thing back to him..of course I am one who thinks 'an eye for an eye etc' :)

A.Norma.x

peevish said...

Well, that would certainly leave a bad taste in your mouth. I'm not sure I'd have any of those family members back again. I hope your fish are okay.

FlippyO said...

My blog is down (financial/server problems) and I'm going through some of the blogs in my bookmarks that aren't on my blog for some reason. Some of them because they're on Leigh-Ann's blogroll (also down), but I thought, "Hey, I haven't visited Vetmommy in eons!", so here I am.

After a quick perusal, it looks like everything is going well, except for the usual stuff of encountering people who don't know how to apologize (or say "thank you", I'm sure), etc. Since some parents don't seem to be able to teach it to their children, I wish schools would have a "manners" week at the beginning of every school year, to remind them of the simple things. Not any all-day classes on manners, just tidbits throughout the day for the first week to make sure everyone knows the basics. That way, that little girl would know that after she did something stupid, the very least she should do was apologize.

By the way, are all the fish okay? We finally gave up on our aquarium. The hard water here makes it so difficult to keep it clean that we're looking at giving the 80 gallon tank to a friend for their reptilian creatures, and then selling the filters. Someday, when we have more time/money and fewer cats/problems with hard water, etc., we'll have an aquarium again.

Anyway, I hope everything is going well...and if you're on Facebook, you can find us easily through our Wee Paws Animal Sanctuary group. Or, through either of our names, although there are thousands of me (Nancy Ross), there is only one Leigh-Ann Gerow, so she's easy to find. Come visit.