Parenthood

Do you remember the movie "Parenthood" from the late 80's with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis? The movie opens with a scene when they're leaving a baseball game, and everyone's singing "when you're running into first and you feel a sudden burst..." Then after they get home, the dad asks the girl if she's sick and needs to throw up, and she says "uh-huh" and does it right then all over the dad. And then later, the little boy throws away his retainer and the dad is sifting through all the garbage to find it. The movie is loaded with lots of situations that parents have to deal when raising children that are sometimes, well...not so fun.

Yesterday we experienced a scene right out of Parenthood. When Ammon got off the bus last night, we were all waiting for him at the dinner table. He seemed rather glum, and I asked him how his day was and he gave me a thumbs-down sign. I asked him if somebody teased him, he said no. I asked him if somebody was mean to him, he said no. He said he accidentally threw away his retainer at lunch.
Excuse me, Say what?
Yep, he accidentally threw away his retainer in the garbage can with his lunch food after he was done eating. He realized it on his way out to recess after lunch, and he was sick to his stomache the rest of the day just thinking about it. But he didn't tell a single person about it. He didn't tell his teacher or the lunch lady or go to the secretary's office (which is where his grandma works) to call us at home. Josh or I would've gone in right then to help him look through that garbage can. I asked him why he didn't do that, and he said it was because he didn't want to wear the retainer anymore if it had been in the garbage, and he didn't want to look in the garbage either.
So, after our family dinner was over, I called one of the lunch ladies, and she said the garbage man comes nearly every morning to empty the dumpsters. We had two options: we could let the garbage man swallow it up in the morning, or we could be dumpster divers that night. So Josh and I took Ammon to sift through the garbage last night. We bought some sanitary gloves, loaded up the flashlights, and headed off for our Family Home Evening Adventure.
We sifted through four entire large garbage bags of food. It was disgusting. But I found the needle in the haystack, the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, the retainer. We told Ammon his punishment for throwing it away and not telling anyone was to have to wear the retainer right then. EWWW! No, we just teased him by saying that. He said "I would have to scrub my mouth out with soap if I put that dirty retainer in my mouth right now. I know what my punishment can be instead: No Nintendo DS for 2 weeks." As soon as we got home, he looked at the calendar and figured out the day he could play Nintendo DS again. We never even told him he was going to be punished. We just wanted him to learn the lesson that mistakes happen. We know that, and we wouldn't have been angry with him for telling us. But it would've been easier to sort through one can of garbage than a whole dumpster full. But I think he learned the lesson in the freezing temperatures of the cold night, shining the flashlight on his parents digging through all that garbage.