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Parenting is difficult, and some parents lay down punishments that really don’t make much sense. What would you do if your friend was grounded from the next social event that he was invited to because he stayed up all night studying?

That is what happened to the friend of the guy in this story, so he invited him to a movie that they didn’t really want to see, just to satisfy the conditions of the punishment.

Personally, I think this was a genius move and a sign that he is a great friend. Check out the full story below and see if you agree.

How I Got My Friend Out of Being Grounded

I had a dear friend whom I’ll call Friend. He was the head of the anime club and generally a fun nerd to hang out with.

Ok, let’s see what happened.

We still talk once in a while on Facebook, though we haven’t talked in person in a long time, but he’s still a good dude.

He’s a year younger than me, so at the time of these events he was a senior and I’d just started college, having graduated that May. I was keeping up with him through the occasional weekend visits or his Xanga posts.

Apparently, senior year is difficult for this person.

So, it’s a new school year, and being a senior, workload is piled onto Friend because you gotta get ready for college, am I right? Which means tons and tons of assignments to finish.

Sure don’t miss those years. Friend was struggling to get into the groove, and it got to the point where he had to pull the dreaded all-nighter to finish an essay that was due the next day.

Parents can be strict about some things.

He got it done, and as far as I recall him telling the story, he didn’t even miss that day of school! And yet, for some reason, apparently his parents decided that he should be punished for this behavior.

I guess because they didn’t want to encourage him procrastinating? If you asked me, the panic of getting an essay done on time and going through an entire day of school on absolutely no sleep is punishment enough.

This is a serious punishment for his friend.

The terms of his punishment were that he wasn’t allowed to go to the next event he was invited to. I was furious on his behalf; he was a senior, and inevitably there would be a lot of parties that Friend would potentially have to miss and lose valuable time with friends who would be graduating in May.

And then, of course, there was the potential of upcoming school events like Homecoming, which I never went to but for all I knew he might have a date who’d want to go.

They are planning something clever.

In my mind, friendship was far more important than learning whatever lesson he was supposed to learn from being grounded.

So, when I griped to my mother about this, because we like to keep up to date about how my friends are doing too, she suggested a little malicious compliance; We CREATE an event to invite him to.

Here is an event they can plan.

It wasn’t anything grand; we just looked at local theater listings for movies. Something simple and cheesy that I could tolerate watching by myself.

I decided on Everyone’s Hero, a cheesy animated baseball movie that starred Rob Reiner as a baseball and Whoopi Goldberg as a baseball bat. Yeah, 2006 was a weird time.

Technically, his punishment is over.

Anyway, I called Friend up and invited him to go see Everyone’s Hero with me. Obviously, he couldn’t go because he was grounded. But, the next thing he was invited to, he could remind his mom that I invited him to go see a movie.

I’ve told this story to peers before and sometimes got given flack for trying to work around his parents’ punishments like that. But honestly, it’s pretty tame by most teenage rebellion.

It was a real event.

And besides, it’s not like a lied; I DID go see Everyone’s Hero even though Friend couldn’t come with.

If anything, I’m the one who got punished because that movie was terrible.

This is what I call a good friend. He really helped him through the unreasonable punishment.

Check out the comments below to see what other people thought of this story.

This would have been smart.

Apparently this movie was really bad.

He is a great friend.

It was an unreasonable punishment, so they did what they had to do. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if his parents knew what was happening and didn’t even care.

They might have realized that they overreacted and saw this as a good way to let their son off the hook.