Honesty: a $20 Lesson

We took the day off from school to maintain my kids' (read: my) sanity while out
getting the oil changed,
meeting with bankers,
and running various other errands.

But sometimes I think my kids learn more on those days than on our "school" days.

Like at Jiffy Lube, where one kid paid very close attention to the informational tv explaining car maintenance. I'm sure he knows much more than I do now.

Or at the bank, where the other kid figured out that it doesn't make sense to charge someone a bank fee just because they jumped through 871 hoops with their accounts instead of 872. (We got our money back.)

But my favorite lesson of the day: honesty is often shown through actions rather than words. So when one of my kids found a $20 bill on the floor of the dressing room that he shouldn't have been in, we talked about why turning it in was the right thing to do.

"You didn't earn that money, and no one gave it to you, so to pretend that it's yours is a lie lived out by your actions."

The sales associate was impressed by his character when he walked up there and handed him that tantalizingly crisp bill. And when we came up to pay for our stuff later, he took both the kids to the bouncy ball machine and got them a colorful, bouncy treat.

So, that - that was a morning well spent.