October 18, 2013 at 04:20PM

Kate (11yo) just walked in the door from school saying "Thank you, thank you, thank you Mom!" Which was great, except I didn't recall having done anything for her to thank me for. I finally got the full story: At lunch two of the girls from her class were being lunch workers. They were in charge of cleaning up leftover garbage, so they decided to have a contest between the two of them to see who collected more. At the table Kate was sitting at they had already put their garbage all in one bag. One of the girls came to pick up the garbage, but a girl at the table grabbed the garbage bag and said it was her big special lunch someone had packed for her. Then when the contestant walked on to another table the girl with the "special lunch" started laughing and saying they'd give the garbage to the other garbage collector. Kate pointed out that she'd just lied and it wasn't nice. SLGirl used the usual cop out of "Oh, I was just joking." Then one of those great moments for mothers happened -- Kate remembered what I have to say about that excuse, figured how it applied to the situation, and repeated it. Crazy, huh? Kate: "It's only a joke if everyone involved knows it's a joke." She says that everyone at the table ended up agreeing with her -- except SLG who was a bit embarrassed. Lunch finished happily enough for all involved. This gives me hope that those things I have to say over and over again are getting through at least sometimes. All you fellow-Parents: keep it up! What we are saying sometimes even WORKS!!! And apparently kids can even feel grateful about knowing how to handle a situation properly. Imagine that! ... And then I lost all my cred 'cause I went to give Kate a celebratory high-5 because she felt awesome for doing what she knew was right... and ended up doing one of those super-lame high 5's where our hands missed and then I kinda ended up just pushing her hand back all awkwardly (you know what I mean, Joseph Jensen). At least I admitted to my lameness and we all had a good laugh :P via Facebook