Joy Riding

Last Sunday the Young Men/Young Women had to sing in sacrament. Because I am always the only person who knows how to play the piano, I played for them in sacrament. I sat on the front row so that I wouldn't have to walk down the long aisle. Zac stayed home with the kids. Everything ran smoothly...I went to Sunday School, then I had to teach the lesson in Young Women's. When I got there, one of my Laurels, Cassie, came up to me and gave me my car keys. She had told me that I had left them on the bench in sacrament. Later I found out that she had taken them out of my coat pocket as we were walking up to the stand. At the time, I was very grateful, thinking that maybe they had fallen out of my pocket, etc. I was teaching the lesson about "truth" and she stood up and left right at the beginning and didn't come back. When church was finished, I walked out to my car, and it was parked in a different spot....hmm.

So now the question becomes, How far did she drive my car? Did she just put it in a different parking spot, or go joy riding? She is 16 yrs old, BUT has not gotten her license yet. I was going over every different scenario to confront her...do I go to her parents first? Do I treat her like an adult and go to her first? Do I tell the YW president? I still want her to feel like she can come to me if she needs to, but she needs to know that what she did was WRONG.

Tuesday was mutual, and I decided that I was going to talk to her just to find out what really happened. Like I said, I don't know the whole story...maybe even one of the young men that she likes drove it, and she was just a passenger, etc. I talked to the YW President ahead of time, I just felt like she needed to know. BIG MISTAKE. I told her several times that I wanted this to remain confidential, I didn't want anybody else to know about it, it was between me and Cassie, but she can be there when I talk to her, etc. She went ahead and talked to Cassie without me even being there, AND she told everybody and their dog about this! I was so frustrated! Our YW President is only 19 yrs old, which explains a lot of the immaturity. So Better or worse? It was Cassie's DAD who drove my car! When Cassie got the keys out of my coat, HE thought it would be funny to move my car! I can't fault Cassie for her Dad being an idiot! I have never even met the guy! Apparently this is his personality, he thinks everybody is his best friend, yadda yadda. The only thing that I am grateful about having her Dad being the one to drive the car is that at least he is an experienced driver, and most likely wouldn't have crashed our new car. But how do I tell a 50 yr old man the diffence between right and wrong? I'm just going to drop it, but I let Cassie know that she needs to respect her leaders, etc.

We got a good foot of snow yesterday. We couldn't get out of our driveway because it is slanted so steep. Zac started to shovel our driveway, so that we could get out, and across the street is a mom with 3 little kids, and her husband only comes home one weekend a month from work, so Zac started shoveling her driveway instead, and our other neighbor came out. Then they decided that they would work together and shoveling each other's driveways, when out neighbor who has kidney failure came out and said "Hi" to them and went back inside. Zac thought that it was a hint to shovel their driveway, then across the street our other neighbor starts shoveling with a regular shovel, so Zac went over there and shoveled their driveway, etc. By the time he was done, he had shoveled 6 other peoples driveways, and didn't even finish ours. After we were able to get the car free from the driveway, I had to go visiting teaching. When I was leaving, my car got stuck in their driveway too. I had four guys come and push me out. I guess that's what we get for moving to a mountain.