Mrs. Johnson, the polished and distant new neighbor, hired my 12-year-old son Ethan to mow her large lawn, promising him $20. After two days of hard work, she refused to pay him, claiming the lesson of hard work was payment enough. Ethan was crushed, and I was furious.
Determined to teach her a lesson, I enlisted a landscaper friend to reshape her beloved hedges into odd designs and ordered three truckloads of mulch to block her driveway. When she returned home to find the mess, she confronted me angrily, but I calmly reminded her of her debt to Ethan.
Embarrassed, and with neighbors watching, Mrs. Johnson reluctantly handed Ethan the $20. She never asked for his help again, and her lesson in honesty and fairness became neighborhood lore.
