When Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge, Iowa, found a bottle of booze under the front seat of her 19-year-old son's car, she took out this ad on The Des Moines Register's classifieds:
"Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for 3 weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet."
And that got her nationwide attention and kudos from a lot of people!
[She said] "The ad cost a fortune, but you know what? I'm telling people what happened here. I'm not just going to put the car for resale when there's nothing wrong with it, except the driver made a dumb decision," Hambleton said. "It's overwhelming, the number of calls I've gotten from people saying, 'Thank you, it's nice to see a responsible parent.' So far, there are no calls from anyone saying, 'You're really strict. You're real overboard, lady.' "
Steven Hambleton, a freshman business major at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, obviously was not one of the callers. And he didn't feel much like talking when contacted Tuesday.
"I don't think you can print" his response to the ad, his mother said. "He's very, very unhappy."
We have two kids. We are going to talk to our kids about drinking and let them know we want them to wait till they are 21 but if they choose not to and want to drink at 18 then they must do it at home under our supervision.