It was Saturday morning.  My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking when our three year old son walked in the front door and said, “daddy, I scratched your car.”

My brand new Subaru station wagon was parked in the driveway.  It was less than two weeks old.  He took my hand and led me out the door.  On the way he told me that he was riding his older sister’s scooter down the driveway and the handlebar had scratched the car.  Her scooter had been dropped onto the sidewalk so many times that the rubber grips no longer covered the end of the handle bars.

He stopped beside the car and pointed.  The scratch began at the front quarter panel, two inches past the headlight, and continued through the front door, the rear door, and ended about two inches before the tail light.  Bare metal was visible through the paint.  It was really more of a gouge, deep and wide, running in a straight line all the way down the side of the car.

He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, daddy.”  I sighed, got down on my knees and hugged him.  I said, “thank you for being honest.  Now, please don’t ride the scooter in the driveway anymore, not in ours or anyone else’s.”  He promised and ran off to play.

A week later he came home crying.  A neighbor two doors down had scolded him, telling him not to ride his bike on the sidewalk in front of his house.  I went to see the neighbor.  He told me he didn’t want his Cadillac scratched.

This is why the world is in such a mess.  We care more about stuff than we do about each other.