Fricken Frackin Vandalism!

Mia's band teacher called me this afternoon. Her flute, the one we JUST bought was vandalized at school today. Someone removed it from the supposedly locked cabinet and thrashed it around breaking keys off and denting it to smithereens. Nice. Hello middle school! ugg!

Mia is not totally without fault. When we bought the flute, we told her that she needed to bring it to and from school every day. On Friday when she came home without the flute, she told me her 'teacher' insisted she leave it there and that it would be locked up. I questioned her on it because how in the world could she practice at home??? OK, so I figured that maybe the band teacher got tired of students forgetting their instruments and that's why they had this rule. She said they practice for 1.5 hours at school and that her grade was based on participation.

Well, the true story is that her 'teacher' was another girl who plays flute and it teaching Mia. She is the one who told her it was safe to leave it at school. And that most of the students leave theirs. That might be true but the band teacher told me that the students should bring their instruments home every day. On day one, I asked Mia to clarify her flute responsibility with the teacher and she failed to do that.

So it appears that Mia bent the truth a bit to suit her desire...which was to blindly follow the advise of another student even if it was in disagreement with our request.

I am annoyed that we basically kissed $100 goodbye and have nothing to show for it. I am annoyed that Mia did not trust us, the parents, because we told her that leaving it at school was a bad idea!

I am pleased with the response from the band teacher. He said Mia was a delight and that he was glad to have her in his class. He said that he would try to have the instrument repaired when the repairman comes through next week. (I guess the school owns some instruments and has a repairman that comes by regularly.) I don't really have much hope based on Mia's description of the damage. Anyhow, he said he would take responsibility since he did not tell Mia about the risk.

Anyhow, dh and I talked about it and we are not punishing Mia. The natural consequence is that we are not going to buy another flute. Heck, we pulled money out of our emergency fund to pay for the first one...which was used a whopping 3 times in class.