Naughty children lose gifts to eBay
‘I’m crying on the inside,’ Houston father says as tree comes down
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:38 a.m. ET Dec. 25, 2004
HOUSTON - The kids were naughty, Dad put the presents on eBay instead of under the tree — and Mom’s been crying ever since.
Now, even the tree’s down.
Saturday morning was sure not to be very jolly for three brothers — 9, 11 and 15 — who didn’t straighten up when their father told them Santa wasn’t too pleased with their fighting, cuss words and obscene gestures.
Dad and Mom had warned their sons that the Nintendo DS video system — and the three games that go with it — were headed for the auction block if they didn’t get their act together.
“No kidding. Three undeserving boys have crossed the line. Tonight we sat down and showed them what they WILL NOT get for Christmas this year. I’ll be taking the tree down tomorrow,” the man announced in his eBay posting.
“If you don’t buy them, we’ll return them to the store,” the seller known online as magumbo—2000 reported on the site.
Thursday night, the auction wound down with bidding at $465.01 — below the price the man had set. He said he would probably list the items again.
A very bad day
A single day of particularly bad behavior set the Christmas crackdown in motion.
“These are normally really good kids,” said Dad, who asked the Houston Chronicle not to reveal his name.
Dad even admits he and Mom are partly to blame for being too lax at times.
But enough was enough. The warning of an impending sale came earlier in the week at a sit-down between offspring and parents.
“We told them they were destroying each other and the calm and peace in the household. It had to stop,” said the man, who did tell the paper that he works as an information technology specialist and lives in Pasadena.
The boys pledged to be nice, but were back to their old ways the next morning.
That night, Dad announced that he would indeed be putting $700 in video games up for sale on eBay. The oldest boy double-dared his dad to make good on his word.
Son shouldn’t have done that.
Dad said Mom has been in tears since the showdown.
“I don’t do it outwardly,” he said, “but I’m crying on the inside.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6753901/
Naughty children lose gifts to eBay
Naughty children lose gifts to eBay
Awesome story. If more folks took a hard line with their children's behaviour the world would be a better place.
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Last year a kid got drunk on his mom and dad's $120 bottle of Dom champagne and all their liquor so they sold his playstation 2 and all his games to get the money he owed them.
When I was younger, I used to think that the world was doing it to me and that the world owes me some thing…When you're a teeny bopper, that's what you think. I'm 40 now, I don't think that anymore, because I found out it doesn't f--king work. One has to go through that. For the people who even bother to go through that, most assholes just accept what it is anyway and get on with it." - John Lennon