Its kind of a CRS thing...............I can't begin to tell the things I've left somewhere, many without happy endings.

This may sound bad (hope not), but a lot of our foster kids have had a problem with stealing things. As a matter of fact, one of them stole my van!!! But outside of that, and for a lot of reasons, many have developed "light fingers." A buck here, 5 bucks there, and also some larger stuff. I caary a "Day-Timer" which is a leftover habit from my past life, which has all my money, cards, checkbook, etc. in it. Yeah...that's dumb, I know. But in any case, I started hiding it. Needless to say, some would find it and abscond off with a few bucks and I got to the point of putting it in different places almost daily. The inevitable result of that should have been obvious.........I have spent hours trying to find the damn thing!!!

The best part of this boring tale comes from one of my somewhat less bright and more light fingered kids, who always swore, "Honest, it wasn't me!!!" We're heading out "Birthday Bash" and I can't find my DT/Wallet. Yeh, you guessed it.........He went right to the place it was (third drawer, MY dresser, between sweaters) and got it. Still maintained he didn't steal anything, but all the other kids and Karen and I had a good laugh!

Same kid asked me to hold his money from his parttime job so he wouldn't spend it. I would put it in an envelope and hide it and he was happy that he didn't spend it and was "really saving up." Of course he found the envelope and started snitching bucks from it....but he didn't realize that it was his! I let it go on and on, because I KNEW he'd find it and steal from it! One day he asked for his money so he could go buy the new bike he'd been saving for. So we both went to the "hiding place" and the look on his face was priceless!!!! "Gee, *****, somebody stole your money!" says I, with a VERY direct look. His thievery slowed down a bit after that.

Spaw