In today’s story, a friend’s dad thinks his son is trying to sell his drum kit, so he gets revenge by stealing other musical instruments. Then the friend gets even more revenge on his dad.
Let’s see how the drama escalates…
Steal my guitar? Say goodbye to everything you own.
Background: My friend who I’ll call James and I are in a band and his Grand Pa on his mom’s side of the family allows us to use his house as a practice space.
Since hauling things back and forth can be a pain we tend to leave a lot of our equipment over there.
Up until a few months ago both of his parents were also living at his Grand Pa’s house.
James’ dad moved out.
A few months back his parents got into a huge fight because his father is basically a dead beat, hasn’t had a job in a decade, and outright refuses to look for work.
At this point she’s basically had enough of him, tells him to get his possessions and move out.
He moves out but he ends up leaving the majority of his stuff in the garage. This is a huge pain because his stuff is stacked to the ceiling in boxes and taking up half of the garage.
She gave him a months notice to come and get his stuff but he never did. He ended up moving back in with his Dad (James’ Grand Pa on his Dad’s side).
James’ dad came to get his drum kit but took a lot of things that weren’t his as well.
Last week out of nowhere James gets a series of angry and borderline threatening texts from his dad wanting to know what James had done with this old drum kit that his dad had left in the garage. He was all paranoid that we might be trying to sell it because a similar drum kit popped up on craigslist recently that he thought was his.
James explains to him that the kit is still out in the garage and that he can come get it at anytime.
His dad replied that he was gonna come get the kit but he apparently still thought that we were trying to sell it on craigslist and just hadn’t found a buyer.
His dad came by to get the kit when me and James weren’t around, but when we came back we discovered that not only had his dad taken the old drum kit but he had also gone through all of our music equipment and taken several hundred dollars worth of cymbals and snare drums that belonged to James, several of our microphones, and one of my Fender telecasters.
Instead of calling the police, they decided to get revenge.
The Revenge: Me and James were rightfully mad that his father had done this.
James called him and demanded to know why he had taken some of our music equipment.
His father told him that it was pay back for trying to sell his drum kit on craigslist and hung up.
Me and James considered just calling the cops and being done with it but I had a better idea. Since his dad hadn’t come back for the rest of his stuff after his mom gave him a months warning, that technically meant that everything that he left in the garage was abandoned property and we could do whatever we wanted with it.
They sold, donated and burned all of the dad’s stuff.
So what me and James did was we had ourselves a little one day only yard sale of his dad’s stuff, everything 5 cents a piece.
Word travelled fast around the neighborhood and soon everyone in the areas was coming around to do a bit of shopping. We sold tools, video games, tv’s, clothes, you name it.
At the end of the day we had made about 20 bucks in change, everything else that was left we donated to good will with the exception of his clothes. We burned those in a fire pit.
With virtually everything his dad owned sold, donated, or burned the only thing left to do was to go get our stuff back.
James’ Grandpa made the dad give back the music equipment he stole.
At around 8 am the morning after, we rolled over to James’ other Grandpa’s house (the one on his Dad’s side) and knocked on the door.
His Dad was still sleeping but James’ Grandpa opened the door. He invited us in, and we gave him the run down of everything that had happened.
James’ Grandpa was mad. He woke James’ Dad up and absolutely laid into him verbally. After he was done yelling at him, he forced him to give us all of our music equipment back and to apologize.
Right before we left I handed James’ dad a jar full of nickels and told him what we had done with all his stuff. If looks could kill I’d be dead now, but he just told me to f*** off and went back inside.
Good for James’ Grandpa for taking his grandson’s side instead of his son’s side, and good for OP and James for getting rid of all of the dad’s stuff…although, I might’ve tried to sell it on Craigslist!
Let’s see how Reddit responded…
This reader would’ve gotten more money for the dad’s stuff.
Another reader thinks the revenge will continue…
Here’s the perspective of another guitar player…
Another person thinks OP and James actually helped the dad.
Here’s a nice summary of the revenge…
They really should’ve sold everything at value and kept the money. They still could’ve gotten their stuff back.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.