Pinky and the Brain – oh, Laurie and the boys

First of all, I’d like to say Happy Birthday to my big brother, Wayne!  He’s 38 today.

Laurie is in the living room, recovering from a serious coughing fit that threw me into a panic attack.  Before that coughing fit, we had a talk about a few things.  It went rather well.

For about the fiftieth time, lately, I’m up just a few hours after going to sleep.  No full night’s sleep anymore, because my wife always needs something every two to three hours that she can’t seem to do for herself.  Grr.  Oh well, such is life.

We talked about the boys, Michael and James. 

Yesterday, at about 5:30am, we were awakened by a series of phone calls from Stacy, who had to be at work by 6am.  She was working a 14-hour day.  Since I don’t know whether or not I’ve said so in my diary, I’ll state it here that Stacy and the boys moved out last week or so.  That has not ended my involvement with them, though.  Quite the contrary.  It seems to have elevated my involvement with the boys, James in particular.  Yesterday morning, Stacy called to say she needed to drop James at our house, so he could catch the bus from there.  She never explained that reasoning, and she was furious, so I didn’t really ask for an explanation at that time.  She was not angry with James or me.  She was angry with James’ school.

James is my 14 year old godson.  He’s a complicated little devil!  I say "devil" only as a weird term of affection, not literally.  I figured out really fast, yesterday morning, that he’d lied to me about something and might be lying to his mother about the same thing…just a different lie.  It was all about James’ grades and detention hall.  His math teacher called me the other day, since I’m authorized to discuss both boys’ school situations, and told me that he was failing her class and not coming to a single detention.  Apparently, these days, teachers use detention as a tutorial period.  Not so, when I was in school.  The same day, I confronted James about what his teacher had said.  He said she was lying; he went to every detention he got.  Well, I knew better.  Why would the teacher lie to me, when it would be relatively easy to prove her wrong?  Besides, James has a habit of altering the truth to suit his own wants.  In other words, the boy lies, sometimes.  

This particular morning, he had told his mother that he "couldn’t" go to his lunchtime detentions because he didn’t have the same lunch period as the teacher who gave him detention.  I don’t know what lunch he has, so, for the moment, I have to accept that as truth and hope I don’t find out otherwise.  BUT what he didn’t tell his mother was he had the option of attending detention after school, too.  Stacy is a workaholic, so she’s a little off and out of touch with the schools, herself.  Stacy was all bent out of shape, saying they wanted to criticize her son but not do a damn thing to help him correct his situation.  Well, I took the bull by the horns.  I tried to calm her down, first of all, because I was afraid she was mad enough to wreck on her way to work.  Then, after I’d made her laugh, we got off the phone.  I came into the room where James had gone and lit into him like nobody’s business.  I told him what his mother had said.  Since MY mother happened to teach at his school until mid-December of this past year, I knew their policy was to allow students to make up d-halls after school.  I told him that.  He reiterated that he couldn’t make it to the lunch detentions.  I told him about the phone call from Ms. Kelley again and what she said, that he skipped every d-hall she gave him.  He decided to twist words on me.  He said, "It’s not d-hall, it’s detention!"  Everyone here knows that d-hall and detention are one and the same.  He just did that to piss me off, and it worked.  It brought out my Daddy in me.  

I told him that he better PRAY he wasn’t lying to his mother like I thought he was, because I was getting tired of his lying to his mother and getting her already-tense self all worked up when it wasn’t even necessary.  I told him I was ready to beat his ass myself.  Thankfully, I didn’t do it.  He cares about James, first and foremost, and damn the consequences it might have on anyone else.  That is unacceptable.  He should care about himself, but not to the detriment of anyone else, especially his mother.  

Later, I calmed down and apologized for having gone off on him, but I told him, very quietly, that I am really tired of his attitudes and how he seems to think we’re the stupidest people on Earth.  I find myself going through what so many other parental figures have gone through…..frustration from thinking that these teenagers don’t realize we used to be kids, too.  We know most of their tricks BECAUSE WE PULLED THEM!  They seem to think we just sprang to life the second they were born, and we had 21 years before James came along.  We were hardly responsible adults, but still…we were HERE for a while before he was.  

Well, I didn’t mean to go on that much about what happened yesterday.  My original point was about my wife and the boys.  

Okay, we talked about it.  I asked her what she felt was their place in OUR life.  Did she see them as a friend’s kids or my godsons, or OUR godsons, what?  She said she understands that they are my godsons, and I feel more like a father to them because of that.  Or, more accurately, I feel like they’re my sons, because of that.  Hard to explain the difference.

Anyway, she said she doesn’t mind my role in their lives, which is good, if she’s being honest.  If she’s not, that’s really on her.  She SHOULD be honest with me, whether or not I like what she says.  

So there are no fights about the boys’ and my relationship.  The only real problem is that my wife doesn’t much LIKE James.  She adores Michael, but James…well, she seems to expect the unreal…that he’ll drop all pretense and behave like a perfect child, and that’s just not going to happen.  As frustrated as I get, I remember that it’s part of being his age.  What level we allow him to carry it to is another story, so we’re fighting it tooth and nail.  

I just don’t want him to grow up to be a thug, which he SAYS he wants to be.  That’s just stupid.  He’s seen what these types of men have done to his mother, and he wants to hurt women the way the same ones he looks up to do?  I don’t EVEN think so!  No, he’ll be a real man, somehow or another, if it kills me.  I spend a lot of time lecturing him, which I know is the last thing teenagers want and/or even need.  I prefer to think I’m guiding him, but it boils down to lecturing, really, I guess.  Not that I pretend to have it all figured out, but shit, I know a man isn’t supposed

to play around on his partner.  He should settle with one and ONLY one and work to make her and his life together as good as possible.  We had a disagreement about child support the other day, too….God only knows what brought that topic up.  He seemed to think since his own father hadn’t been a regular payer, he reserved the right to someday be a deadbeat himself.  NO WAY!  I told him he would pay for any child he ever brought into this world, no matter if he wanted to or not.  I’ll be the FIRST to side with the mother and slap his ass on child support!  Stacy is the same way, except she says, "If some little bitch says she’s pregnant with my grandbaby, she better be ready for a DNA test!"  I hate that she seems to consider all young females "bitches".  Does that mean she sees herself as a bitch?  I wonder.

On to other things……

Laurie slept in bed the night before last, for the first time in quite a while.  It was nice to share that time together again, even though, with all our health issues, all we can really manage is to hold hands, most of the time.  It was contact, and we are both starved for that.  Last night, she stayed in the bed until about 4:30am, which was about an hour and a half ago.  Then, she had to move to the recliner in the living room again, and I decided to stay up and face the day, which is why I’m here right now.

Things seem to be moving along in a positive direction for us.  I’m really glad about that.  It’s about time it happened again.  We’re working on six years of marriage, and I don’t like the thought that maybe some of our original flame has dwindled in size.  Thank God that if that IS the case, something can happen to bring it back, once in a while.

 

 

Herman Forstmann

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