First post of the Biden Era. It feels good -- or rather I should say it feels not completely and totally depressing. "Good" is too good a word. All my problems -- all our problems as a nation -- are still there -- they didn't evaporate at noon last Wednesday -- but at least the pall as been lifted. The blanket of embarrassment, incompetence, and vileness that has shrouded us the last four years is no longer there. Sometimes I think of something distressful, and then I lose it in a different train of thought, but I remember it was bad, and then I come back to it, and if it's something minor, like I lost in fantasy football or something like that, then I'm relieved. Ever since Election Day 2016 whenever I would do that, no matter what it was, I would then think, "... and Donald Trump is president," and so my mind would not be at ease. Now, I don't think that anymore.
And that's a good thing because the coronavirus is more than enough on its own for us to worry about. And my number probably won't come up for the vaccine for, like, six months. But at least people I know -- healthcare workers, teachers, old people -- are getting it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
In other bad news, Lil' S1 did the worst thing he's ever done yesterday. Well, he did it about a month ago, but we just found out about it yesterday. He was in a pod with his brother and his friend/classmate E who lives down the street. And yesterday he was acting shady when I asked him for some coins from this little safe he has, so I drilled down a bit, and he confessed that he stole E's money, and he was acting suspicious because he didn't want me to see it.
I was very upset and disappointed, thinking he took a few dollars from her, but it got worse. He stole her entire wallet, took out all the money, of which there was a lot (holiday/birthday gifts apparently), and then tossed the wallet to "destroy the evidence." That takes it from a normal-kids-being-kids indiscretion to something damn near juvenile delinquency.
I called S, who was out on a walk, and we tried to come up with the best punishment. He had to write an apology note to E, and he doesn't get any non-school screen time for a week. I don't think that's enough though. We have to come up with something that will stick with him. He's a tough kid to discipline because he doesn't acknowledge that he got in trouble. He'll accept his punishment, but then he'll just act like everything is normal. I want to see some moping and some tears. There was a little bit of that at first, but only a little bit. I want him to have to dwell on this for a long time. I want him to feel bad about it.
And maybe he does. It could be pretending everything is okay is his way of coping with it. He did fess up pretty readily, which means he probably felt guilty about it. But then again, he didn't say anything about it for a month, and he only admitted it when I asked him to open his safe. It could be he only copped to it once he thought he was caught -- I'm not sure. It would have been so easy to play it off, by the way. If he told me S's parents gave him the money, I totally would have believed it. So maybe he wanted to admit it; maybe he wasn't savvy enough to cover it up.
I texted E's mom to tell her what happened, and to make things worse, they thought she lost the wallet and were annoyed with her because of it. E actually suggested Lil' S took it -- apparently, she saw him alone in the room where her wallet was -- and her parents told her it wasn't nice to accuse a friend of such a thing. So, it's just a bad, embarrassing situation all around.
Thankfully, E's parents are very chill and understanding, but E legit doesn't want to be Lil' S1's friend anymore. She refused to see him, so I delivered the apology note by myself (and ordered E a new wallet). Lil' S1 included a Diglett card with his note, and so E at least wrote back saying that she liked the card. I joked with E's mom that it was atonement by Pokémon.
Anyway...
In non-child-rearing news, S and I started watching this show Derry Girls, which is pretty funny. It's one of those British shows I have to watch with the subtitles on or else I miss every third line. It's about these four high school lasses (and one lad) in Northern Ireland in the mid-'90s. I love the setting since I was a high school student in the mid-'90s, not in Northern Ireland, of course, but a lot of the cultural references are the same. In the very first episode there was a Pulp Fiction reference and the soundtrack is like a trip down memory lane -- Ace of Base, Snow, Cranberries, Cypress Hill, etc. The show also prompted me down a Northern Ireland Wikipedia rabbit hole last night. I think I have the basics of The Troubles down now, and I understand that U2 song "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" a bit better. (The show is a comedy, however, and only tangentially touches on politics.) Also, while I was in the rabbit hole, I learned the difference between Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (aka Ireland), and I learned the difference between the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England. I've always wanted to get all that straight in my head.
Alright, that's all for today. Until next time...
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