"HUMILIATIONS GALORE!"

I had a little (ok, a lot) of fun at Katie's expense this afternoon. Katie lost her cell phone a few months ago and lied about it...Multiple times...To my face. Three weeks ago when we renewed our plan, I asked Katie if she wanted to upgrade her phone (long since lost) and she said she liked her phone and to just go ahead and renew her old phone. We did. Tired of the excuses ("It's not charged...I left it in my locker...") I wormed the truth out of her. I simply told her I was disappointed that she lied to me and the floodgates opened. Today was her final punishment. In addition to working off the cost of the new phone and the "new phone" activation fee, she had to accompany me to the AT&T store (packed with holiday shoppers) where I announced to everyone what my darling had done. Then I marched her the length of the store to get her photo taken next to the AT&T logo. Pictured with Katie is Charles, who had helped us renew our plan a few weeks ago, and found the whole story pretty funny and wanted to be in the picture. Taking the photo spawned some questions from on-lookers who hadn't heard my initial announcement, and I repeated it for them, with Katie standing at my side. Katie weathered it well, but she got the message.

After all was said and done, I asked Abby what she'd learned as a result of Katie's misstep.  She said, in true middle child fashion, "I learned that when I lie to you, I'd better not get caught."