Having children comes with all sorts of challenges. For starters, you have to keep your kids safe, teach them important values, protect them from harm and make sure they grow up to be productive members of society. Still, beyond the serious issues that follow us for a lifetime, there are also plenty of little surprises along the way. Though some of these can be silly misunderstandings, others are more serious.
And this story out of Utah is one of the more serious cases.
It all started when Ben and Jackee Belnap were saving up cash.
Ben’s father had bought him and Jackee season football tickets for the University of Utah. Still, the couple was in the process of saving up money to pay them back. Finally, they had $1,060 in cash holed away in an envelope. When they were ready to hand the envelope over, they suddenly realized it had gone missing.
As it turns out, their two-year-old son Leo had gotten ahold of the envelope.
Though he’s only two years old, Leo already knows how to use the family’s paper shredder.
According to Jackee, she and her son sometimes used the paper shredder together. “Leo helps me shred junk mail and just things with our name on it, or important documents we want to get rid of,” she said.
After some more fruitless searching around the house, the family’s worst fears were confirmed: Leo had put all of their money through the paper shredder.
Needless to say, the family was shocked and had no idea what to do.
Though they knew it was just an accident, it’s still hard to lose $1000 for no reason! Fortunately, their good attitudes were able to rule the day. “We just, for like five minutes, we just shuffled through it, not talking,” Jackee said. “We didn’t know what to do and then I broke the silence and I’m like, ‘Well this will make a great wedding story one day.”
Fortunately, there are actions people can take in unfortunate situations like these.
Shortly after discovering the shreds, Ben tried to see what could be done about getting his money back. “I call the guy the next morning and he said, ‘Oh, we might be able to help you here,’ and I was shocked,” he said. “He said, ‘Bag it up in little Ziploc bags, mail it to DC and in one to two years, you’ll get your money back.”
Fortunately, the family didn’t have to wait very long at all.
After their story went viral, the family got an unexpected surprise.
Instead of having to wait for their shredded money to get back from DC, Dr. Pepper pledged to reimburse the money themselves as a gesture of good will. They even tweeted to the family about it to pledge the money publically:
Through it all, the family was able to keep their sense of humor about everything—but let this be a warning to all the parents out there!
If it wasn’t clear before, don’t let your toddlers learn how to use a paper shredder! And if for some reason you do teach them, do a great job of hiding the cash you have lying around the house! In any event, we can file this one under hard life lessons learned. And above it all, Jackee is right: this is definitely going to be a great wedding story one day.
Here’s to hoping they get their money back sooner than expected!
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