Pardon the length, but I gotta rant on this one...
My wife is a paralegal for a lawyer in the city we live in... One of the things she does every morning is check the court schedule to make sure that none of their clients are on there without them knowing about it. So, she's going through the list on Monday and sees her 19 year old sister on there for misdemeanor larceny. She was charged with stealing about $340 worth of clothes from a department store in the mall. The night before, we had gotten a call from her asking where to park for the courthouse because "her friend had a speeding ticket" that they wanted to take care of.
So, my wife calls her mother to make sure that she knew, and of course she didn't. Her sister had never fessed up about it. When confronted, of course it was her friend that did it, she was just there and didn't stop her (of course.) Both their MySpace pages are littered with comments as far back as two months talking about how much they love all thier new stuff, how they can get away with stuff nobody else can, comments about calling each other "Fingers", and saying how they hope they never had to see a pair of handcuffs. She's still denying it all outright. She even went so far as to say that the Fingers and handcuffs things were just inside jokes for something else. I was like, what, for being kinky lesbians or something? She even tried to tell me that she wasn't lying when she talked about her friends speeding ticket... SURE you were telling the truth... Your friend had a court date for a speeding ticket the same day as your appointment for larceny!
The thing is, her mother is basically covering for her. She's still not admitting that she's done anything wrong, and the mother isn't pressing the issue. Hell, they're going on a trip to Dollywood tomorrow... Gee, how's that for punishment? They're both keeping it a secret from her father, but thank god my wife told him. What's weird is that the dad isn't doing anything about it, either. He's waiting until the sister and mother go see the lawyer on Monday (my wife got the case continued) and he's just going to show up since he works downtown and act like he found out that way.
Seriously, what the hell is going on here? Am I the only sane person left? The second that happened, my parents would've dragged my ass out of my room, grilled me about it until I cracked, then grounded my ass for a year for trying to cover it up. It's not so much the stealing stuff that's the killer, it's the fact that she tried to cover it up, and is STILL LYING about it, even after she got busted for it. The mother is acting like there's some grand dramatic reason for trying to keep it a secret from her dad, but I can't fathom what it is. The guy is one of the most laid back people I know... He caught us in some pretty comprimising positions and didn't try to kill me or anything. His reaction when he found out about her stealing the stuff was "Why the hell would she shoplift? She's got my damn credit card!"
I just can't fathom what's going on in these people's heads... I mean, since when does keeping this sort of shit a secret EVER work out well for anyone? I'm trying to convince my wife that trying to act like she didn't tell her dad is just as stupid as her sister not fessing up in the first place, but she's not listening... I'm half tempted to just stroll in and let everyone know that everyone else knows what's going on. I'm definitely getting the "You're an outsider" vibe from everyone, though, and am getting a bunch of crap for treating the sister like she's lying (which she is).
Again, sorry for the rant, just needed to rant to someone...
