It is well known that toddlers struggle with impulse control, that’s something you just have to accept about them. They’re as likely to ‘enhance’ an expensive painting’s quality with a box of crayons as they are to melt that box of crayons all over your Thanksgiving turkey as it bakes in the oven. But one toddler is going viral for something that is as blissfully unaware as it is truly infuriating. In a recent Twitter post, one Utah dad regaled his followers with a tale about his two-year-old sticking over $1,000 cash into a shredder.
Ben and Jackee Belnap were actually saving the money to pay Ben’s mom back for buying them season tickets to the University of Utah’s football season. Rather than put the money away digitally in a savings account of some kind, they elected hide away cash in an envelope. But when Jackee couldn’t find the envelope after searching high and low, she decided to check the shredder, and yep, their $1,060 had been split up into hundreds of tiny and valueless strips of paper.
So me and my wife had been saving up to pay for our @Utah_Football tickets in cash. We pulled our money out yesterday to pay my mom for the season… Well we couldn’t find the envelope until my wife checked the shredder. Yup. 2 year old shredded $1,060. pic.twitter.com/93R9BWAVDE
— BB (@Benbelnap) October 2, 2018
Chances are, simply reading that caused your heart to sink into your stomach, which is completely fair. But fortunately, neither parent was too upset with their son Leo.
“Leo had no idea he did anything wrong,” Jackee told CBS News, “It felt unfair to get mad, and he probably doesn’t even know what cash is as we use our credit card for almost everything.”
After a few hours on the phone with the US Treasury, Leo’s dad was promised that at least most of the money can be replaced. Unfortunately for them, that could take anywhere between six months and three years. The photo of the shredded money has been shared over 70,000 times, and now the picture is worth a thousand words and over $1,000 too.
