Some lessons about growing up have a funny way of backfiring.

So, what would you do if your dad kicked you off the family phone plan to “teach you responsibility,” but a year later, he realized it was costing him more money and invited you back?

Would you rejoin? Or would you stand your ground and remind him why it happened in the first place?

In the following story, one adult son finds himself in this situation and decides to keep his own phone plan.

Here’s what happened.

Phoney Business

I was on a family phone plan with my folks well into my adult years.

My dad liked to take the lion’s share of the data plan and would send out a passive-aggressive “oink oink goes the pig” if anyone but him was using too much data. The rest of us had to connect to WiFi whenever possible.

We all had better have a good reason if we got close to using up a quarter of the shared data plan (there were four people on the plan and it was split four ways, but he liked to take his half out of the middle). The four of us paid into the plan each month, and in theory, it was cheaper than an individual plan.

He went out and got the most affordable plan he could find.

For a birthday, he announced that I was getting kicked off the family plan because I needed to “be a man” or some other grown-up nonsense. I think he may have mentioned something about how he hated that my grown relatives were doing something similar and needed to grow up.

The details are fuzzy, but this wasn’t the first or last time he would announce unpleasant things at birthdays and holiday family gatherings, so I took it in stride and switched to an independent phone plan.

I got the cheapest, most basic data plan, and it ended up being comparable to what I was paying for the family plan. I also realized just how little I actually use my data, and the plan was actually fairly comfortable for my needs, so I stuck with it.

Unfortunately for his dad, he liked his phone plan.

A year later, he brings up the idea of getting me back into the family plan because getting me off the plan ended up not only costing the individual more money per person, but the phone carrier also had a deal going on where the more people connected to one plan, the less expensive per person the overall plan would be.

I told him that I was perfectly happy with my independent phone plan, paying my own rate.

I also reminded him that the only reason why I got off it to begin with was because he didn’t think I was being a responsible grown adult.

He stuck with it to prove a point.

I simply wanted to “prove to him” that I can manage all of my own bills like a “real” adult, unlike others in my family, whom he liked to complain about.

He tried asking me a few more times about it throughout the months because it would be so much cheaper for him, but I continually brought up how much he hated my relatives who “refused to grow up” and that he wanted me not to be like them per his “gift” on my birthday.

I stuck with it because while I could access more data that I “could” use, the absence of snarky texts about being a data hog was more than worth the price.

Wow! Sometimes, that’s what you have to do!

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit have to say about this story.

This person thinks he should take it further.

For this person, one line really made them laugh.

Here’s a reader who went through something similar.

It’s lucky this person said no.

The father needs to grow up. Clearly, he doesn’t realize that adults don’t play those games.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.