A Day of Anger - Broken iPod Touch and More

I can't count this as a day of win.  I failed in a confrontation with a petty teacher who feels that people with herniated discs in their back, such as myself, should take off their boots on the mat at the door rather than climbing the eight steps to the landing where there is a bench to sit on and another big mat to absorb snow melt and dirt.  The point of contention is the resulting small amount of water and dirt on the steps.  The fact of the matter is that I cannot take off my boots without sitting down.  The pettiness was that when presented with the fact that I was not choosing to go to the bench simply to be ignorant and inconsiderate, the teacher was not willing to back down and admit that the excruciating back pain might trump a small amount of water and dirt.  I have, in the past couple of weeks, spoken to the school custodian about my going up the steps to the bench as well as the school principal.  In fact, they both gave me the okay.  The option I presented to all three of these individuals was putting a chair at the door.  I know.  That's crazy talk.  It would solve everybody's problem.  The custodian and principal said, "No, that's okay, use the bench."  The petty teacher ignored my suggestion and proceeded to equate her "sore back" with my herniation as she trotted up and down the stairs.  Yeah, that's exactly the same, so you are totally justified in dismissing my almost certainly imaginary problem.  I feel compelled to note that my usage of the word "petty" is a result of my hesitation to use nastier words in this medium and an avoidance of derogatory terms that start with a b which might result in the scratching of an itch.  The fail in all of this was, and is, my anger.  The fail continues because every time this has come into my mind today the anger returns; including now, during the supposed cathartic process of getting it all out.  I don't know how to let stuff like this go.  That can't be healthy.  I'm trying.

Next up is the broken iPod Touch (4g).  My oldest daughter, who just turned twelve, really really wanted an iPod for her birthday, so my wife and I decided to order her one.  We didn't actually get it ordered until a couple of days past the birthday day, so it didn't arrive until about a week ago.  She's been playing with it a lot and that's fine.  The rule is that she can't take it to bed.  Same rule for cell phones and other sorts of video games.  No real problems there so far.  I suggested that she not take it to school because of the real possibilities of theft and damage.  The not taking it to school didn't last very long.

I haven't spoken with her about it yet.  When I got home late this evening after choir practice, I noticed the iPod sitting under some papers on the counter.  I wouldn't normally take note, but I saw some cellophane tape wrapped around the back, so I picked it up.  That's when the badly cracked screen became obvious.  With my exclamation of, "What the hell?" my patient wife told me the story of how our beloved eldest child had dropped the device, apparently while taking it out of her bag coming up the steps from the train station.  Well, shit.*  Leaving aside the issue of how foolish it is to be digging around in a bag and playing with electronics while climbing stairs, which I will have to make part of the discussion, I have to decide how I am going to handle the events and my own emotions about them.  I've calmed down about it considerably now, but the initial flush of anger was hot.  I'm told there were a great many tears, rationalizations and self-recriminations before I got home.  I don't know whether she heard any of my reaction and discussion with Kumarie, but the tears started up again before she finally went to sleep.  I stayed clear because an hour past bedtime on a school night is not the time to begin the discussion of consequences for actions.

I will check whether there is any coverage of accidental breakage in the purchase.  I strongly doubt there will be, but I will check.

So why did she take it to school at all?  Kumarie feels that she simply wanted the "cool kids" to see that she too has something that's is cool.  I understand that feeling.  Really I do.  My painfully awkward early teen years are not so far gone that I cannot recall the rawness of the emotions and the overwhelming desire to be accepted and to fit in.  Still the point needs to be made that coolness and lack of caution has led to a broken iPod.  An expensive broken iPod.

After soothing some of the tears and helping our daughter to get to sleep, Kumarie came and told me what some of the fears are about.  Among other things, she is afraid that I will be "really angry with her for being careless", afraid that I will "never trust her with anything valuable ever again", and that I will "never look her in the eye again."  She's right on the money with most of that, except for the extremes of "never" and the looking her in the eye thing.  I'm not sure where that came from.  Perhaps equating looking somebody in the eyes with respecting them.  I understand her feelings and fears, but truthfully, that doesn't do much to preventing me from feeling most of what she's afraid I will be feeling.**

She needs to begin to learn several things from this and my reaction to her and discussion about it needs to address these learnings.  There are consequences for your actions.  That was an expensive device to hand over to a twelve-year-old and it didn't last very damn long.  It does still function, but not perfectly, and with the integrity of the glass plate compromised I wouldn't lay long odds that it will continue to function for very long.  If she want's to have it repaired, she's going to have to earn the money to pay for it herself.  This conflicts with my own frustration over broken electronics and my desire to just have the damn things fixed, but I'll have to suppress that urge in this case and stand firm.

I looked into the construction of the 4th gen iPod touch and it turns out that the LCD and the digitizer are fused together and cannot be replaced individually.  This means that in order to repair damage to one of those components you must replace the assembly, which drastically increased the cost of the repair.  Parts alone will be in the neighborhood of $100 USD, and then there's the labour unless I want to tackle it myself.  I don't really want to do that.  I don't have the specialized tools for disassembling these sorts of finicky items, and I don't have the motivation to take the time to learn how to do it properly.  Total repair cost is likely to be somewhere between $160 and $180.  That's a lot for a twelve year old kid.

Finally there is the issue of my own anger and the management thereof.  I don't want to damage my relationship with my daughter.  I also cannot just let this pass unremarked.  I must find a way to impart the necessary lessons and control myself in the process.

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*  I can't say that I consider the word "shit" to be a swear.  It's a mild expletive at best.  Even the moderate amount of being around cows and horses that I have done informs my perspective that shit is just shit.
**   I'm not sure that sentence makes grammatical sense, but I think the point is clear enough.