So this beef is pretty old but I have always wondered if I was truly the asshole in this situation. There’ll be a TL;DR at the end because this is going to be super long because I have no chill. Also I’m using fake names.

In April 2023, my friend Sara and I planned an Airbnb spring break getaway with our kids. Her daughter, Amy, is about the same age as my oldest son (they were 8/9 years old at this time). Soon after we settled in, I checked on Amy and my son and they were using Amy’s tablet to record dance videos and Amy said she was going to post them to YouTube. I chuckled and told them they were both too young to be posting to YouTube. Amy then tells me she posts videos to her dad’s account all the time. I shrug and continue on with the day.

In July 2023, I have Sara and Amy over, along with our other friend Emily and her daughter Lisa, while my husband and son are out of town. We planned to have dinner and then the adults would get in the hot tub while the girls hung out up in my son’s room. After we got out, we let the girls get in the hot tub and splash around. When everyone left, I went to straighten up my son’s room and saw our iPad on his bed. I looked to see what all they did and came across a picture of Amy and Lisa making kissy/“seductive” (I guess?? Idk how else to describe it??) faces and tousling their hair. I giggled and sent Sara and Emily the picture because I just thought it was silly. A few days later, my husband and son are home and I’m getting out of the shower when I hear my husband at the door telling me he really needs to show me something very urgently. When I come out, he tells me that he had gotten a notification from YouTube saying that a video posted to his account was under review but had now been approved. He does not upload anything to YouTube so obviously he was like wtf. What happened, you ask? WELL the iPad was logged into my husband YT account and the girls had posted a video to it! The thumbnail was that tousled-hair picture I mentioned before and the title was “hot girl summer swimsuit try-on”. Basically it was the 2 girls talking about how they got new swim suits, then flipping the iPad down so they could change, and then flipping it back up to show off and dance in their new swim suits. It had only been up for like 15-20 minutes by that point and it already had 12 views. On my grown adult husband’s YouTube page. Why did it even get approved?! They were like 9 years old at the time!! I felt sick to my stomach and immediately texted Sara and Emily to let them know what happened and that we deleted it as soon as I saw it. Now, I know that Amy was the instigator because Lisa is very reserved and shy and quiet and Amy is definitely more on the wild side. Emily seemed to be equally mortified and said she would talk to Lisa about digital safety and not using other peoples’ devices without permission. Sara, however, was very blasé and said that Amy “accidentally” uploads videos to her dad’s YouTube all the time (remember what Amy said to me at the airbnb???) and this was probably just a mistake, but she would talk to Amy about not using other peoples’ devices too. Super weird reply to finding out your daughter posted p3d0 bait to a grown man’s YT but hey, I’m not Amy’s mom and I fulfilled my duty has a friend. We all move on with our lives.

Then in like… early August 2023, I have Sara and Amy over again to just hang out. I let my son and Amy use the iPad to take videos of them playing in the backyard (you would have thought I knew better atp but I had already had a couple sours ok??). Eventually, they both came inside and admitted that the iPad screen got broken. Sara and I ask our children separately what happened. My son says he didn’t see what happened and Amy says she doesn’t know what happened so at this point no one really knows and it doesn’t matter because the iPad needs to be fixed. Sara says she will ask her husband if they know anyone who will do it cheaply or for free and get back to me. A couple days later I ask her for an update and she says that she was told it would be more expensive to replace the screen on this model than to buy a new one. I sigh and the iPad gets placed on a shelf and doesn’t get touched for almost a year.

Then in June 2024, I grabbed the iPad off the shelf to check out an app I found out about that’s specifically for tablets. I was happy to see the iPad still worked, and then suddenly I wondered if there was video footage of when it fell. Sure enough, the last video shows how it fell….and Amy had been physically holding it when it did. She was sitting at our picnic table on the back patio showing my son jump back over the fence after grabbing a ball he had kicked too far, and she must have lost her grip and it fell straight through the space between the seat and the table part. I watched several times, analyzing the angles and movement… I even went out to the backyard and sat in the exact spot where she was at the picnic table to see if it’s possible it was being propped up instead. I didn’t want to believe that my best friend and her daughter skirted responsibility for this when, if the tables were turned, I would absolutely would have taken at least partial responsibility from the jump and AT LEAST chipped in on a repair or replacement. Also, side note, I was in the throes of then-undiagnosed PMDD and was having mild paranoid delusions and anger issues. But Amy was undeniably the one who broke it. That day I was supposed to go with Sara and Emily to Amy’s dance rehearsal but after seeing that I wanted nothing to do with it. I sent the video to Sara, knowing it was fucking ridiculous to bring this up a year later and not even knowing what resolution I wanted but I just NEEDED HER TO KNOW. Justice sensitivity hard at work here. I told her that I wasn’t coming to Amy’s rehearsal because I felt like shit because I was extremely upset and I understand that accidents happen but like… wtf?! When she responds, she says she asked Amy again and she claims it was the wind that knocked it over. I told her that I wanted to believe that but I investigated and that was not the case. Then I start to feel awful and text back that I’m just going to get a screen protector for it and be done with it because I don’t want this to come between us and I wasn’t trying to get her to pay for a new one or anything. She then Venmos me $25, says it’s for a screen protector, and then throws me a good ol’ “Hope you feel better.” With a period at the end. I don’t respond after that and we don’t talk for some time. A month later I texted her saying that I was sorry for freaking out and I still feel awful about it and that I love and miss her and her family. Her response was definitely dismissive but that she wished the best for me and my fam.

Now, I want to say again that I understand accidents happen. And I understand that kids aren’t born bad and that they do stupid shit all the time. I have a 10yo son, trust me - I get it. I don’t have a problem with Amy personally AT ALL because she is a CHILD. What I had a problem with at the time was the fact that Amy clearly lies on the regular and her mom, my (old) friend, lets her get away with it. And it’s not lies about little things, it’s lies that compromise the safety of others and their possessions. However, being from the Midwest, we don’t usually come out and say these things. I can guarantee you, though, that the outcome would have been the same if I did say what I felt. It just sucks and I really wonder if I was being too judgmental and/or if I was the one in the wrong. I do think that I can be hard to be friends with and maybe this was some kind of straw that broke the camels back for her without me even noticing.

TL;DR my ex-best friend’s daughter lied unchecked about a bunch of stuff and one of those things was that she broke my iPad and it took me a year before I figured it out. When I decided to confront my friend about it, she ended up washing her hands of me after trying to deny responsibility.

Was I the asshole?? Or do we both just suck???