Whose Kid Is This?

Jacob has gotten in trouble several times before at school. Usually his teacher just takes care of it at school, and I never hear anything about it except for some weird story from Jacob. If it is bad enough though, his teacher sends a note home to be signed by either me or Ben. Jacob is usually pretty good about giving us the note, especially if his teacher has pinned it to his shirt! The hard part comes when we ask Jacob to tell us what happened. He never can quite tell us the truth...he only tells us what he views as "truth". It is hard to know what to do when it is "your baby" and you keep telling yourself "he is only 6 years old." But, when you find out that "your baby" has in all ways lived up to the biblical meaning of his name---conman, deceiver---then it puts you in a much tougher spot. Take for example yesterday. Jacob came home. I asked him if he got in trouble...he innocently said, "No, ma'am" and then proceeded to ask me if he could play the x-box. Since he didn't have a note and he said he didn't get in trouble, I trusted him and let him play for a few minutes. Today however when Ben picked him up from school, Jacob's teacher met him at the car with a note. Take a look:

Now, I know that everyone reading this blog notices something very interesting....Ben Newton written at the bottom in Jacob's very 6 year old handwriting. Also, please notice the date as 5-24-06 which, by the way, was yesterday! I was confused at first, not thinking my son to be into forgery at such a young age, and I asked Ben why Mrs. Anderson made Jacob write his (Ben's) name at the bottom of the letter. It was then that he told me that she had not made him do that....Jacob had signed it and turned it in believing that she would believe that Ben had signed it. I am laughing as I type this! Where in the world did he get the idea to do this?? What in the world made him think it even looked like his daddy's signature??? I am amazed at his higher level thinking skills in solving this "problem" that he had...but don't get me wrong, I am also disappointed that he lied and did something very wrong. It gets even better because when I asked Jacob where he was when he wrote his dad's name on the letter, he told me it was when we were at Wal-Mart. Well, when we had gone to Wal-Mart I picked Cole to go in with me and be my "helper" leaving Jacob and Annalisa in the car with Dad. Jacob informed me that if I had picked him to be my helper he wouldn't have been able to sign the letter because he wouldn't have been in the car! Well, that just earned him a couple of more spankings!