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My knee-jerk reaction to someone carelessly dinging my door is to put my foot into their driver's door so they can see a huge dent to remind them of their own carelessness. However, two wrongs don't make a right and I never act upon these ill-willed feelings. I sure do think the thought though!
A friend in Germany told me that one day he came out of a grocery store to find a man and his 8 year old boy standing next to his car. The boy was sobbing and the father had a somewhat blank look on his face.
As he hit his remote and the car's doors unlocked, the man and his son came over and the man said, "my son has something to tell you". The little boy said, "My father taught me to be careful opening the car door so as not to damage another car. Today I did not do what I was told and I scratched your car door. You must let me pay for the repair."
My friend said it wasn't that great of a car and not to worry, and there was another good sized ding on the other side, feeling really bad for the little boy who must have been serverly scolded at the very least when this happened.
The father then switched to broken English and said, "Please do not refuse my son's offer. If he does not learn this lesson now, he will grow up to be disrespectful of other people's property. Take your car to this man (had the name of a body shop on his own business card) and he will repair your car at my expense. My son will reimburse me as he earns the money in the coming year or two."
While Germans are seriously anal about far too many things in my opinion, this is one area where I wish Americans would be more particular... especially when it comes to raising our kids to both appreciate and respect the EXPENSIVE property of other people.
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