A young boy from Michigan has learned a tasty lesson in money management.
Six-year-old Mason Stonehouse had been playing on his dad’s phone when he discovered his soon-to-be favourite app – food delivery service Grubhub.
After putting his son to bed, Mason’s father Keith was shocked to find delivery drivers began to frequent their doorstep, one after the other leaving something behind. Keith likened the strange evening to a Saturday Night Live skit, and in doorbell camera footage he could be heard asking one of the drivers “what the hell is going on?”
A look at his phone confirmed that Mason had pulled off a parent’s nightmare – the boy had ordered almost $2,000 (AUD) of food from restaurants all across their town.
Speaking with TODAY.com, Keith explained that the two were having father and son time in front of the TV when Mason asked to use Keith’s phone. Mason often uses his dad’s phone to play educational games, so Keith thought nothing of it, allowing Mason 30 minutes with the device.
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Keith recalled how Mason made his way downstairs to play, and went to bed without a fuss when his half hour was up.
“A 6-year-old going to bed is not normally an easy thing but he was surprisingly really good,” he said. “There was no fight, no ‘I’m hungry’, or making up stuff to stay up. He just went to bed, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, I wish Mom was here to witness this’. And all of a sudden I hear the doorbell.”
To various news outlets, Keith has mentioned how it was “car after car” that kept “coming and coming” to the family’s home in Chesterfield Township. In his own Facebook post about the incident, he shared Mason’s shopping list, telling his friends “if you’re hungry and you’re in the mood for 5 orders of jumbo shrimp, salad, grape leaves, rice, 3 hanis, several orders of chilli cheese fries, chicken shawarma sandwiches, and plenty of Ice cream – swing on by SMH.”
Keith saw Mason’s delectable adventure to an end when his bank declined an order of $635 (AUD) for pepperoni pizza. As he told Good Morning America, this “would’ve been on top of the $1,000 worth of food that was piling in my kitchen.”
This wasn’t even Mason’s first order of the evening from the same establishment – Happy’s Pizza for a happy Mason – with a sizable jumbo shrimp delivery already having made it to their doorstep.
MLive.com heard from Keith that he tried to speak to Mason about what had happened, but soon discovered that their priorities weren’t exactly aligned, “I was trying to explain to him that this wasn’t good and he puts his hand up and stops me and says, ‘Dad, did the pepperoni pizzas come yet?’”
“I had to walk out of the room. I didn’t know if I should get mad or laugh,” he admitted.
Whether the entire situation prompted more amusement or exasperation from the Stonehouses, they assured everyone that none of Mason’s bouncy went to waste, with the food going to their neighbours, and their phones well away from Mason’s sneaky shopping.
Images: Facebook
This article first appeared on Over60.