Halfway to 18, Make It Stop

Sounded like they were throwing the sofas across my living room, but it was only Allen and JoJo wrestling.  I'd run in there from the laundry room all tensed up, afraid of a fight, but they swore breathlessly they weren't mad, just being alpha males.  My dogs had scattered, Martin was standing there with his arms crossed in case he needed to intervene.  Those two can explode in a flash, birth brothers and emotional twins, high maintenance, oxygen-sucking, handsome guys.

I'd fielded a crappy phone call while at Ray's birthday party regarding a grown son who'd gotten locked up about 150 miles away.  "Theft by deception," he told me, wondering if I could drive a $100 bill out to him.

Dude, have you met me?  Do I bail thieves out of jail?  Or druggies or drunks?  Do you think I have a spare $100 lying around at the end of the month, or even that I'd sign anything guaranteeing a court appearance for one who has a complete disregard for the law?

"Call the place where you live," I'd advised.

"NO!" he thundered, "They had me locked up!"  Then he went on in a retaliatory tirade of what he was gonna do when he got out.

Oh my.

And puh-leeze, let me have this one sweet hour at Ray's party.

This grown kid has long skirted the law, has assaulted people, and has had no consequences, has stolen, and has been both disruptive and oblivious to any form of honesty.  I love him dearly, yet I'm deeply disappointed in his choices.

I again feel as if I failed to get any decent behaviors explained to them as anything other than chump behavior.  "That's for chumps," they'd tell me, when I was simply trying to explain why you don't take what others have, and "Church is stupid," in regards to that Golden Rule.  My Bible based black/white behaviors, hardly ever a grey area to me, annoyed the snot out of many of 'em.

A reason I quit watching Cops years ago, besides being unable to get the Bad Boys, Bad Boys song out of my head for days, was how exasperated I'd get at the criminals who were caught red-handed, yet stood their ground lying through their teeth, cussing at the cops.   Were they raised by wolves?

If I wanted to listen to liars, all I had to do was  dare to correct a behavior around here.  This jailbird once cut the cords to the video players when I'd consequenced his negative behaviors.  If I dared stand my ground, he'd violently explode and hurt someone.  I learned to disengage.

I do not know if he got out or not yesterday.  I maintain my bottom line of not enabling illegal behaviors.  If you think being honest is for chumps, then you need to deal with the consequences of dishonest behavior without calling this honest woman who needs to buy groceries, not fund bail amounts.

Beth's mom isn't doing well and I feel terribly disheartened about it, putting her up for prayer today in Sunday School, and then poor Ray, flush with his fun with his buddies went home happy, only to spike a fever and find out this morning he has strep.

It's gonna be close to 70 degrees this afternoon, I wanna plant the rest of my cole crops before any more rain falls tomorrow, giving us a remnant of false hope, as we don't have a 2013 rain deficit, but the carryover from previous years is still negative.

The rain is welcome.