Liability

The best thing about 2 adults who go to court is this: eventually, someone will be deemed liable. Especially when it comes to car wrecks, judges are usually able to figure out who's responsible. One party pays the necessary fees and fines, and everyone goes home.

Not so with children. When your infant or toddler breaks, maims, or otherwise destroys an object (inanimate or not), guess where the blame goes? No matter what your infant does, it's your fault. If she pulls a cord and drops a keyboard on her head, who do you think is going to hear it from the spouse? If your toddler puts all the toilet paper rolls into the bowl, you'll ask yourself, "Why didn't I lock those up?!?" If your infant spills tomato juice on the carpet, you're going to clean it up because it's your fault. You sit your two-year-old on your lap at a friend's house and tell her not to touch anything; she shoves a lamp off the table next to you, so who's going to pay for the lamp? "But I told her not to touch anything!" So? Everything, no matter how logically you can argue that it was an accident, will end up being your fault.

This thought irks me, though there's little--excuse me--nothing I can do about it.

For instance: my three-year-old niece (my sister's daughter), who is both cute and clever (I'm not saying this because she's my niece; she really is cute. If she wasn't, I would've just said "my niece" and left it at that--I'm cold-blooded that way) has one trait that is both a blessing and a curse: she's very independent. She is a bit geeky (plays preschool games online, takes photos with her digital camera, talks to her dad on a web cam, and I'm not even kidding, I've seen her with a cell phone earpiece as she chats with her dad who travels a lot). Because of this, unfortunately, I've become lax when she comes over to visit and wants to play with our computer. She's done it so many times, I really don't consider the risks.

When she came over Sunday night saying she wanted to play a DVD on the computer, I said, "Sure." I was in the kitchen and told her to wait just a moment and I would put it in for her. Well, a moment was too long to wait. She started clicking away on the keyboard and seemed troubled that she couldn't find the DVD menu easily. As I was walking towards her, I said, "I'm coming. I'll put the DVD in for you." She leaned over, and pressed the power button. I said, "You don't have to turn if off to restart it, kiddo, all you have to do is--" At this point, I noticed a warning sign on the screen. Before I could read past the first few words (which went something like, "File BlahblahX0234blah is missing"), the computer turned off. I shrugged and turned it back on.

Nothing happened. The light went on, but nothing showed up on the screen. I knew something was broken, but I refused to accept it. Tim had already gone to bed, and since the true loves of his life consist of 4 things (chocolate cake, vanilla shakes, air conditioning, and computers), I panicked. I started fixing things that I knew weren't broken (checking the cable connections, adjusting the monitor, etc.). Eventually, I had to wake up Tim, real casual-like ("Honey? There's something wrong with the computer. I'm sure it's something simple, but could you take a look? I'm sure it's something simple ...").

Here we are three days later, and my husband is almost done reloading all of the programs onto our computer because he had to reformat it. I could explain what exactly my niece did, but there's only one thing that matters here: we couldn't chastise her (beyond warning her to be careful) because when all has been weighed and balanced, the bitter truth is this: it's one person's fault for not preventing the situation when she had the opportunity.

I'm considering billing my sister. :)