Slavery reinstated? Maybe....

My son is smart. Scary smart. Yet, sometimes he lacks the good old fashioned common sense.

He has a cell phone with unlimited texting, which he takes full advantage of, as most 13 year olds with cell phones do. Yet, that wasn't enough. Getting on the internet on his phone was something he couldn't stay away from. I'd warned him on multiple occasions, but it never got out of hand so I never turned it off or anything.

Then, came $170 worth of data charges on his cell phone. My.Head.Exploded. He's honestly really lucky he was at school when I found out. Like, REALLY lucky. It gave me a few hours to go from wanting to strangle him, to wanting to take his phone away permanently, to wanting to ground him for life, to wanting to scream until my voice gives out and he loses his hearing. I had a lot of time to think about what I was going to do and say. I never lost my cool (haha, seriously). I came up with what to do. First, his Internet on his phone is disabled. That was a no-brainer. Second, obviously, he was going to have to pay for this, there was no way around that. So, first thing I did was take away what he had left of his Christmas money, which wasn't much. Then....I declared him my slave. Whatever I need done, he's to do it - dishes, mopping, vacuming, folding laundry, dusting, even picking up his sister's toys for her. DONE. Whatever makes MY LIFE easier, he's going to do it. I figure about 3 weeks of this and he will have physically re-paid this debt to me and probably have seriously regretted the whole thing.

Now, the real question is, what to do with all this free time??