What's a Mother to do?

Jake loves earning money. Jake loves spending money. Jake is money motivated. Jake has purchased for himself, on-line, two prized possessions: a Denver Broncos Champ Bailey jersey, and an MP3.

He came to me before breakfast to ask if I had seen the jersey. (Of course not; I don't wear it, and I don't wash it.) I recommended that he look behind the lower of the two bunk beds; he likes to sleep shirtless, and if he took it off, it could have slid down two layers. Glory be to my brain, lo and behold, there it was. (No, he didn't say thanks.)

On to the MP3. It was the joy of his life; it had a large screen, you could detatch the earbuds and share, because it had a mini speaker. I could listen to talk radio in the car, and he could plug in to his own musical world (which sounds amazingly like the hard rock world of the 80's, actually). He loved it.

He came to me after breakfast this morning to show me a cracked LED screen. It no longer works. It cost him $50 to order on-line, and I think he's had it for 3 months. He's heart broken, in an extremely manly kind of way.

There are two mothers in my mind. There is My Mother, which longs to come out with the "It's a bummer when we don't take care of things, isn't it?" lecture, and there is the Me Mother, which wants to wave a magic wand and restore his MP3 to functional condition, objectionable Scorpion music and all.

The irony is that it was just last night that we read Job 1 for family scripture study. In one hour, Job loses all of his sheep, camels, and oxen (in excess of 11,000 animals) and his 10 children. His reaction was to rend his clothing, and say "Naked came I into the world, and naked will I go out. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." But as I was driving him to the bus stop this morning, I just couldn't bring myself to remind him of Job. He's 12, which means he is also the world's most brillian person (all current evidence to the contrary not to be considered as relevant, of course). There is only so much sullen resentment a woman can take.

I'll try and talk to him after school, when maybe his world won't be quite so many ashes.