Disappointment

It's an important part of growing up, learning to deal with disappointment. Friends will let you down, you'll make some bad decisions, and things you can't control may lead to outcomes that are disappointing. It's just part of life. My son is painfully learning this lesson right now. Part of me, the warm nurturing momma in me, feels badly for him. The conscientious, assertive momma in me, wants to tell him to suck it up. It's all a part of life, and if you don't experience disappointment, a) you don't learn and b) the great stuff wouldn't feel as great.

Last week he got in a car accident. I wrote about it in a previous post, but his pick-up truck was totaled. While we were celebrating how lucky he was to walk away with no harm, we waited around to see what the insurance company would say about his truck. We expected them to total it, and crossed our fingers that the payout would be decent and our rates wouldn't skyrocket. Though we don't know about the latter, we did get a check for a bit more than we were expecting. That left two options. We could buy him (really us, because it was our truck) a used car outright for the cash, or give him our used vehicle and use the cash for a down payment on a new vehicle for us.

He got excited and started searching for cars. The pick-up became his by default because we had already had it, but he made it clear he would some day like a car instead. He was banking on that being now. We went back and forth, my husband and I, trying to decide the right thing to do. We didn't want to "reward" our son for having an accident, but we weren't chomping at the bit to have a car payment either. It was going to be a difficult decision.

We spent some time shopping on line and then our whole day Saturday searching. There just wasn't anything we felt good about buying our son for the amount we had. We had a used car, with a single owner (us) with a solid history of no accidents and regular maintenance. Why would we buy someone else's? We came home explaining this to our son, that we decided we'd probably give him ours and buy another, probably used but newer used. Boy was he bummed. My husband and I were a little ticked because we felt like he was being a brat. We were not in the market for a new car, but he created the situation with his accident. We are not harping on the accident or spreading any guilt about what happened, but we sure as heck weren't going to let him puppy dog us and mope around. He's lucky he has a car at all. We both had to buy our first cars. 

Suck it up kid. Get over it.