Imagine saving up more than $1,000 your hard-earned wages, fantasising about what you could spend the money on – maybe a well-deserved holiday, a new laptop or perhaps season tickets for your favourite team.
Now imagine you had a child who discovered this money one day and, feeling curious, decided to put the whole lot in the shredder.
That’s exactly what happened to parents Ben and Jackee Belnap in Utah, whose two-year-old son Leo caught sight of the money one day and knew exactly what to do with it (or not!)
Ben took to Twitter to describe the incident:
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
The couple had been saving the money to pay for their University of Utah football season tickets and were confused when they couldn’t find the envelope they had been keeping it in.
Ben’s parents had bought the tickets for the family and they were saving the money up to pay them back. They had managed to save the full amount of $1,060 and were ready to pay off their debts, so were left puzzled when it suddenly disappeared.
Ben described the moment they realised what had happened to KSL:
I’m digging through the trash and she [Jackee] hollers and says, ‘I found it.’ She’s holding the shredder and she says, ‘I think the money is in here.’
Why would they go to the shredder, seems like a bit of a strange place to look, you might wonder. Well, it turns out Leo is familiar with the shredder as he had helped his mum shred things in the past.
Jackee explained:
Leo helps me shred junk mail and just things with our name on it, or important documents we want to get rid of.
Bless the little lad, he clearly just wanted to get involved and help his mum and dad out with their chores. Maybe next time he should just stick to sweeping up though!
I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted if I were to find myself in that situation, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have been nearly as calm as the Belnaps.
Cherish these funny moments!!
— BB (@Benbelnap) October 3, 2018
Jackee said of their reactions:
We just, for like five minutes, we just shuffled through it, not talking. We didn’t know what to do and then I broke the silence and I’m like, ‘Well, this will make a great wedding story one day.
If you don’t laugh you’ll cry, right?
And Leo isn’t the only youngster who gets himself into trouble when his parents aren’t looking!
One little boy in London wreaked havoc when his uncle nipped to the bathroom and left him unattended for a couple of minutes.
You can see what happened below:
Two-year-old Isaac had decided to occupy himself by grabbing a spoon and playing with some flour – as you do.
He didn’t stop with the spoon though, eventually covering both himself and the room with the white powder, to hilarious consequences.
This incident resulted in Isaac’s 24-year-old uncle Moses coming up with a hilarious nickname for him.
Speaking exclusively to UNILAD, Moses said:
By the time I come back my house was looking like it took part in Narcos or something. I didn’t know whether to shout or get mad so I started calling Isaac ‘Maradona’.
Hilarious.
Well, I think the moral of the story here folks is not to leave two year olds by themselves for even a second because who knows what kind of trouble they could cause in that time!
They do call them the terrible twos for a reason I suppose.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via [email protected].
A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).