Truth Or Consequences

Everyone told me that it would happen sooner or later. I didn't argue with them, either. I knew that my time in the sun as the father of a perfect child would end eventually, and all those dreams of raising a son without the slightest effort would come crashing down. Dreams die hard, you know.
Friday afternoon, my son had planned to go to his weekly after school robotics program, where he would primarily spend his time playing with Legos and SimCity. He was meeting his best friend, the same one he has had since preschool, and when they were finished sometime after five, they were going to walk back to his friend's house for dinner and perhaps a little more video game time. That wasn't exactly what happened.
When he arrived at his after school program, my son discovered there was going to be a lecture on programming, a basic component for robotics. There would be no Legos. There would be no SimCity. The decision was made to blow off the class, since it would be way too much like school for a Friday afternoon. The two of them hustled out the back and hopped a fence. It was a shortcut, but a forbidden one. The gate had been chained and locked to keep the undesirable element of the neighborhood out, and to keep the kids in. As part of this daring escape, my son tossed his backpack over the fence, which he later discovered had crushed the brittle plastic of his binder. The binder was the least of their concern at this point. They were on a mission.
When they got to the house, they only had a few minutes before parents started to arrive, and questions began. That's when our phone rang. My first inclination was to drive up the hill and bring my miscreant offspring back home and throw him into the dungeon. Lacking a dungeon, my wife and I decided to let the evening play itself out and deal with him when he came home. For the next two hours, I puzzled over what I might say: "I'm disappointed in you." That sounded a little dated. "Why didn't you call us on your buddy's cell phone?" That was very practical, but lacked the sting I was hoping for.
And then, he was home, with a shamed expression on his face. Whether it was rehearsed or sincere, I felt the need to prod still further. "What was going on in your head?" All that rehearsal of my own seemed to have left me as unprepared as I was hours before.
"I'm sorry dad. I messed up."
After that, I tried to make some grand pronouncement. I wanted to be able to put in just he right words to that he would be able to take them with him as wisdom for the rest of his life. Mostly I just sputtered and fussed. The message had been received. All that was left was for his parents to pronounce sentence: No video games or YouTube for the weekend. Do all your chores. Do all your homework. No fun.
He took his punishment, such as it was, standing up. I spent the weekend looking for ways to impart that missing wisdom, but became slowly convinced that his first big brush with "the law" was all the wisdom he needed. For now.