Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Lesson Learned

A little extra excitement this week at the Ten Hakens.  On Monday night we were planning to go out for dinner with some friends and I was on the way home in the van with the babysitter.  We were just a few houses down from our house when I heard a loud crash.  I stopped the van and looked behind me and the passenger side rear door window was completely gone.  There was glass everywhere except where it belonged!

I looked through the hole in the van where the window used to be and saw a teenage boy standing on the lawn with his hands on his head staring at us in disbelief.   After making sure our babysitter was OK (which she was) I got out of the van and asked this young man what happened.  He threw a rock and it happened to find the window of my van.

I took down his info since his mom wasn’t home and told him I’d be in touch.  I called my insurance agent (who is also my brother, Mark!) and he told me to talk to the kid’s mom and get an estimate.

Later that night, I went over and talked to his mom and both she and her son were very good about the whole thing.  They were very clear that they would pay for any of the damages which was great.  I didn’t have to ‘fight’ with anyone and could avoid having to go through insurance.

So yesterday the young man came over and helped me clean up all the glass and today I had a new window installed by an auto glass company.  He’s going to pay me on a weekly basis until it’s paid for and everybody wins.  I only had to drive around Grand Rapids with plastic on the side of my van for two days.  And for those of you who know how particular I am about my vehicle – that was a two days too long! =)

Well, it’s all better now…and I think there were two lessons learned.  I hope the young man who threw the rock will learn that actions have consequences and many times those consequences are unintended.  I learned a lesson too…most of the time, people want to do the right thing and will do so if you give them the chance.   I kept my cool and didn’t get mad and in return these folks have been great about wanting to make things right.

I’m sure there’s a sermon illustration somewhere in all of this…but I’ll get back to you on that.  For now, it’s just a good story that could have turned out much worse than it did. 

1 comment:

Paul said...

I once hit a car with a rotten tomato...never ran so fast in my life. Guess I missed the lesson there!