Disciplining our children is never easy and it is, if you really love your children, one of the most important things you can do for them. You must remember, you are not their friend; you are their parent. Below is a true story and one that I think of often when I am faced with the inexorably difficult challenge of having to discipline our boys.
Shopping for a used car when I was a kid was arduous because we didn't have the internet to streamline the process. It was grueling, and time consuming sifting through the classified ads in the local papers and checking the community bulletin board at the big local supermarket to see if anyone was selling a car. What's worse, when I would find an interesting car in the paper that I could afford, often times the traipse out to the car required a very long drive. And rarely if ever were things nearly as good as advertised.
One day during my car search I was looking through the papers and I came across an ad for a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba. The ad went into a fair amount of detail about the car's "mint" condition and low mileage. The price was also obscenely low at just $1,800. While the price was about $800 more than I really wanted to spend, I noticed that the exchange on the phone number was the same as the town I lived in. If the car was available it at least would be a short trip to find out that owner wouldn't budge on the price. If this mint condition, low mileage cruiser was even still available.
Much to my surprise and delight, when I called, I found the car was still available. The gentleman on the phone couldn't have been friendlier and told me that the car was immaculate and had just 43,000 miles on it. I got the address and I jumped on my bike and hot tailed it on over.
The car was gorgeous. I don't care for green, particularly on cars but it worked on that Cordoba. The white wall tires were perfect, the car's chrome and Corinthian leather trimmed bucket seats in showroom condition too. There was a floor mounted shifter (rare in those days) and under the hood Chrysler's 400 cubic inch V-8 without any Lean Burn equipment. Nice. An ebullient man of about 48 to 52 years old came barreling out of the house introducing himself with a warm handshake and threw me the keys telling me to have a good time. And I did.
When I got back to his house The Old Man could see that I was quite enamored of the Cordoba. I thought it one of the finest cars I had ever driven and I let him know that emphatically. We walked inside his house talking about town we lived in and how great the Islanders were. Once inside, I asked him what his best price on the car was. He asked me what I was willing to pay. Before I answered him I asked why he was selling the car.
The very talkative Old Man suddenly went quiet. He looked down at the floor of his pristine dining room where we were talking and he looked out of the window. He then looked me in the eye just as a tanned, athletic, long haired teenager, a little younger than I, walked into the room. The kid looked at me intently, incredulously but sadly all the same. Something was up.
"That Cordoba is a car that I had bought for him", the old man said gesturing to the long hair standing on the other side of the room in house that could have been designed by the same person who designed the house I grew up in. "He and I have a problem...he just doesn't listen...and now...now I have to sell it."
He didn't need to say anymore for me to realize that this selling of the car was punitive. The look on the kid's face said to me, "dude, please don't". I felt as though I was a pawn in a father - son war were the father was going to make a huge mistake regardless of what his son had done and I wanted no part of it. I felt sick to my stomach as I fumbled through my near insulting counter offer of around a thousand dollars. The Old Man patted me on the back and shook my hand laughing that that amount of money wouldn't do. I was relieved. The long hair slithered back out of the room.
I jumped on my bike and bolted home taking one last, long glance at the car and feeling very bad for the kid. Very, very bad for the kid. Ironically, I bought another Cordoba not a week or so later and drove by the house where the Green Cordoba was several times over the ensuring weeks and months just to see it again. It was gone.
As my children have gotten older, I've grown to feel even worse for The Old Man than I've ever felt for that kid.
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