The Fighter

I used to be religious. I'm not anymore, but it's something that's hard to shake. Religious imagery, paradigms, language, and stories creep into my thinking. Especially stories.

This week I am thinking about one of those. It's the parable of the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd was out one day, taking his sheep to pasture. After returning them to the fold, he realized than one of the 100 sheep was missing. So he left the others and went to find the missing sheep, the Bible says, because he loved that sheep so much.

The Bible leaves out the part where the shepherd later makes a pie with the sheep's kidneys, but you get the point.

The last three days have been tough.

Wednesday evening was frenzied. I got home from work at about 5:30. I was looking forward to the evening. I had decided I would take Friday off from work and enjoy a long weekend. I was in a good mood. I wanted to get the kids in bed and play some music.

I helped finish the dinner the Goddess had started while she took the seven-year-old to gymnastics.  The eleven-year-old was outside playing with kids in the neighborhood. The Monkey had a complete meltdown the minute the Goddess left, crying, "Mommy! Mommy!" This, of course, set the Ape into a crying fit and the two of them were inconsolable for about 30 minutes. I was wrapping up dinner when there was a knocking at the door.

I opened it and it was my neighbor Crystal. This immediately set the Monkey crying again, as he thought it was his mother.

"You better get out here," Crystal said.

She explained that the eleven-year-old had been in a near-altercation with a group of older kids. Six of them. According to Crystal, there was an initial round, but as the older boys walked away, the eleven-year-old called after them, calling one of them a name and causing another loud argument.

I called for him and he came into the house. He was crying.

"What's wrong?"

"They were picking on me!" he screamed.

"What happened?"

"I was just standing there with my friend and they started making fun of the way I was standing. One of them called me the 'n' word."

Let me interject here that my child is very white. I'm confused about this part of the story. Maybe he's lying. Maybe the other kids, who were black, were using it in a way he didn't understand. But I believe him when he says they made fun of him. I'm guessing it was his blue hair though, not the way he was standing.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I called him a little bitch," he answered. Truthfully this time, I am sure.

"What can I do to help?"

"Go out there and shove them! Punch them in the face!" He was crying harder now, with that combination of unbridled rage and emotional pain that only adolescent boys know.

"I'm not going to punch any teenagers," I said. "I'll go talk to them. Go wait in your room."

I go out to the street. There is no sign of them. I ask a couple of adults standing around or sitting on their porches. One of them saw it. He chalked it up to boys being boys, but did note that there were six kids standing around the eleven-year-old, and that they were older.

I go to his room. I talk to him. I tell him I love him very, very much. I talk to him about controlling his actions and especially the things he says. I explain to him that personal insults don't actually hurt you, but besides that, there were six of them and one of him.

"But you wanted to fight a guy who said something to Mom," he said.

"That's true." Fucking kids. Always paying attention and making connections when you wish they wouldn't. "But I don't fight people who insult me. I don't give a shit what people who are less than me think of me, and I don't want to make our lives tougher. You can go to jail for that, then how could I take care of you guys?"

"I don't know."

"Why did you say something back to the kid?"

"Because he humiliated me!" he screamed, as if answering the most stupidly obvious question that had ever been asked.

"There were six of them and one of you. You would have gotten your ass kicked. Which is worse, getting your ass kicked or being humiliated?"

"Being humiliated," he answered, not missing a beat.

That's exactly what it is like to be an eleven-year-old boy. There is nothing, literally, that you fear more than losing face. You are so driven by your hormones and everything is so confusing. I have not forgotten what that feels like.

I talked to him some more about learning to let things go. The rest of us ate dinner while he sat in his room. He wasn't hungry. I cleaned the kitchen while the Goddess got the younger ones to bed. I stayed up late and played some music.

Thursday I was running on no sleep, but the day started well. I was on the road for work, making sales calls. Then I got a call from the Goddess. Her car wasn't starting. Seemed the battery was dead. I was an hour away.

I drove to where she was and tried to jump the car. Nothing. She called AAA and they said they would be there in about 90 minutes. I was going to have to go off the clock for all of this, though my boss didn't complain that I was using the company vehicle. I called into work.

"Just take me off the clock. I was going to take tomorrow off anyway. I'll take this afternoon as well."

The Goddess and I went to a restaurant there to wait on AAA. We talked. Mostly about the eleven-year-old. She was excited. That morning she had an appointment with a local private school. Montessori. It's just what he needs, she said. They will give him more attention, they can personalize things with him, he will have more hands-on experience. This will be a game-changer for him. And she thought we could do it, since she would be working full-time then.

The wrecker showed up. It was the battery. It was just too dead to take a charge from a jumper cable. He charged it for us. The Goddess went to get a battery. I went home.

The eleven-year-old was already home from school. I talked to him while we sat on the couch, but he was mostly engrossed in YouTube videos.

The Goddess came home, with the rest of the kids, and I asked if she minded if I took a nap. I was exhausted.

When I awoke, the Goddess had come into the bedroom. She wanted to talk about a budget. She didn't think we could afford the Montessori school. The conversation moved into the kitchen. I washed dishes while we talked about all the money we spent. It turned into an argument.

I am a very direct communicator. The Goddess is not. She thinks I lack empathy when we talk. I think she lacks clarity.

Fuck. Why are we doing this? Why do people who love each other get in these battles when they are trying to work on the same problems?

We go through a half dozen scenarios, ways we can save money, ways we can make money, alternatives to the private school, etc. We talk for about two hours.

The eleven-year-old comes to the kitchen. He's hungry. He eats a bowl of cereal and we talk to him. I talk to him about the way he speaks to his younger sister. I tell him he needs to not antagonize her. He is sullen.

I worry that we are losing him. Like the lost sheep in the story. 

I want so badly for him to turn into a happy young man. I want him to enjoy his life and succeed in the things he does. But he is starting to disconnect.

It's heart-wrenching, too, because I know how we could fix it. We just can't.

If he was the only child, we could give him the attention he needs. We could sit with him every night and read just to him. We could talk about school projects and play together and devote ourselves to him.

But he's not the only child here. And when you add all the financial stress we've been having, it makes it even more difficult.

I feel like a failure.

But we're going to do this better. For starters, we are going to send him to the Montessori school next year. I'm not sure how at this point, but we're going to.

Friday (today), was his last day of school before summer break. We are having a long weekend, then he visits the Montessori school on Tuesday. The Goddess just wanted to let him miss the very last day.

I try to sleep in, which means I'm wide awake at 6:00 A.M. It's my day off. I cuddle in bed with the Monkey. The Goddess gets the older kids off to school. We talk about plans for the day and for the weekend. It's nice to relax.

The Goddess gets a call at about 10:30. It's the school. There's been a fight.

At first, I'm really angry. His last fucking day. Why couldn't he just go one more day without getting into a fight?

My anger is dissipated when I realize that I wasn't watching the babies close enough and the Monkey has managed to open a very large drawer full of office supplies (a drawer he has heretofore ignored), dumped them all out, and covered a lot them in spilt chocolate milk. He and the Ape are sitting in the midst of the destruction, playing with push pins.

Dad of the Year there, folks.

It takes about thirty minutes to clean up.

The Goddess texts me. The counselor had given the account. A boy pushed him into his locker. He pushed the boy back. The boy started choking him. He hit the boy in the head with his iPad. The boy's friend jumped in and they pushed him down the stairs. One of the eleven-year-old's friends stepped in a broke it up. She was taking him to get a milkshake now.

Then I'm angry all over again, but with a different focus. Where were the fucking teachers? This happened at a locker and there were no teachers around? He gets pushed down stairs and no one is there to even witness it?

I hate this school. It's where poor kids go and no one gives a shit how they do or what happens to them.

They get home. He's quiet, drinking his milkshake. After a few minutes, he goes to his room.

It's a hard life for an eleven-year-old boy. Sometimes it's hard because your brain stops working and your body does things you don't understand. Sometimes it's hard because it takes every bit of your power to just not fucking cry after someone humiliates you at school. And sometimes you get pushed down a flight of stairs.

He's okay now. He wasn't seriously injured.

I've never been this happy to see summer arrive.

The Repo Man

Sometimes, the ironies of life almost make me believe there is a superintending providence. Almost. But if there is, s/he has a sick sense of humor.

In addition to being a musician and a writer, I work in a music store. It's a pretty good straight job, all things considered, and most days I don't mind it too much. It pays some of the bills. And at least I'm looking at instruments all day.

It's a small shop, literally a mom and pop store. We do a lot of business with school bands and orchestras, especially our rent-to-own program for families to purchase an instrument to play in school. Instruments cost a lot. A decent trumpet is about $900 retail. Saxophones are around $2000, depending on the brand.

We run these rental programs in the schools and families fill out an application with us, we run a credit check, and then they make monthly payments. For the most part, this is a win-win. The store has been in business for over 35 years and unlike the big-box music stores, they've never declared bankruptcy.

I spend a couple days a week on the road, visiting schools, checking in on teachers, seeing if they need anything.

One of the things I do in connection with this is repossession of instruments.

If you are already familiar with my most read post, you'll already sense the irony.

Yeah, so when families fall behind on their payments, I'm the guy who comes and takes their kid's clarinet from them.

It sucks. It's the part of my job I hate the most and I've not done it particularly well in the past. My boss will sometimes say something to me about it. "Need to be working on collections! We can't let those get out of hand." Because honestly, I don't collect after two or three months of delinquency. It's usually nine or ten months. Sometimes it's a year or more.

Then last month, I suppose sensing how distasteful this part of the gig was to me and the other salesmen, the boss came downstairs and announced, "I'm giving $30 for every repossession you do!"

It changes things, doesn't it? I mean, it's the difference between your kid playing in the band and my kid taking gymnastics. Or maybe if I repossess enough trombones this month, I won't have my own van repossessed again.

It's like a bum fight on YouTube.

So like the fellow says, "I ain't gay, but $30 is $30."

I've become the most active repo man in the shop. I've been working overtime, too, usually about nine hours a day, six days a week. Today was supposed to be my day off, but I worked just so I could do collections. "Collections." Like we're selecting stamps. It's a nice euphemism.

The work itself is kind of interesting. You spend a lot of time tracking people down. It feels like being a P.I. or something. You are looking through old contracts, contacting the next of kin, calling their workplace, pretending to be asking a question about your transmission or pet grooming or whatever. Or look on Facebook. People will switch telephone numbers to avoid creditors, but almost no one deactivates Facebook.

The easy ones happen at the school. The family gets behind and you go to the kid's teacher. I have one of those today.

I had stopped by last week to collect and the teacher told me it was his best player, really nice kid. I told him I'd called, sent letters. The family was two years behind on payments. I could get fired if I let that go. The teacher asked me to sell him a cheap saxophone so he could give it to her to play. We usually give 30% off to schools. I gave him 45%. He doesn't have the budget for it, but I guess the kids will sell more pizza kits or something to pay for it.

So today I stopped by again. "Hey, man. I really need that saxophone. I'm going to get in trouble if I don't collect it."

"Can you just give me till Friday? I'm going to call the mom again. The girl doesn't know. She's going to cry when it gets taken."

That's me. Stealing kids' dream at $30 a pop.

The harder ones, or maybe "trickier" ones, are when the kid quits playing or the family moves. Then you have to go knock on doors.

"I've never heard of him. We just moved in four months ago."

"That bitch moved out with her kid last year. If you find her, let me know."

"We don't have the trumpet anymore."

That was my day today, plugging in addresses in my GPS, reading directions to houses from old contracts, knocking on doors. Some of the houses weren't there anymore. A lot of them have "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs.

I knocked on one house today. The woman answered and I explained who I was. She said she'd get the instrument. Her son wasn't playing it anymore.

She came back a few minutes later. "I'm really sorry. I just couldn't afford to pay anymore. I lost my job."

"It's okay. I understand. I had my car repossessed last month. Times are hard right now."

It's left me in a mood I'd rather not be in.

I used to not understand my dad. When he would come home, he wanted everyone to be happy. He would get really pissed off if anyone was complaining or arguing or anything. I kind of understand it now.

You do these things, sometimes shitty things, to take care of your family. And you want to imagine that they make a difference, that everyone will be okay because you decided to take this path.

Only, you don't give a shit if you are seven, because you just want to watch "Monster High" for another 23 minutes and you're probably going to cry if someone doesn't let you.

I sat down at dinner tonight and the eleven-year-old asked, "So, how was your day?"

I tried to explain that it was kind of lousy and started explaining repossession to him, but then I decided that the less he knew about that for now, the better.

After dinner, the Goddess bathed the kids and put them to bed, giving me time to write. I've got a magazine article due in the morning and at twenty cents a word, I'll need that to pay the bills this month, too.

It was pretty easy going, so I wrapped it up quickly. I went to check on the Goddess and she was asleep with the Monkey in our bed. She says it's bad sleep hygiene, but most nights, he won't fall asleep in his own bed. And truth be told, I sleep better with him there, too.

Then I stepped outside and talked to my neighbor Crystal, who smokes behind her house so her kids won't catch her. We talked about the neighborhood, about the shootings that have been going on, about heroin and the homeless people down in the tent city. She said it was good we lived one block up the hill instead of "on the flats," where most of the shootings were. We talked about how much childcare was costing us and she told me to let the Goddess know if she was still looking for a job.

Then I took my car to the gas station at the foot of the hill. A young blonde in a super short skirt and stilettos came up and asked me if I could "help her out." She said she'd make it worth my while. I told her I was married, but honestly, I couldn't imagine having such sad sex anyway. Besides, I'm too broke to afford it.

The guys online, waiting to pay while the cashier stood behind the bullet-proof glass were talking about jobs. One of them said that they were hiring housekeepers at the hospital. "All you gotta do is stay clean 30 days." "Count me out then," said another.

It's a hard life. But part of me wonders what kind of father raises his kids in a place like this. And what kind of man does the things I have to do to make a few extra bucks for bills.

Oh, well. It's late. I need to crawl in bed with the Monkey and hope sleep comes quickly. I've got another full day of collections tomorrow.

Homeless

Being a parent makes you really emotional about current events.

A couple weeks ago, while I was at work, something came across my Facebook feed. It was a news item that our city's mayor had decided to dismantle the "tent city" where 30-40 homeless people live on my side of town. This decision came one day after an article in the newspaper about how people were helping the homeless and also during the coldest week we've had this winter, when temperatures have plummeted into the single digits.

The mayor justified the decision saying that there were plenty of places for the homeless to go and he didn't want any of them to freeze to death. So at 2:00 in the afternoon, with no advance announcement, city workers dismantled the makeshift camp and seized what property the homeless were unable to take with them.

I've never been homeless. I have, however, had friends who became homeless stay with me for short periods. The mayor and his supporters say, "The homeless can go to a shelter." This may be true, but there are very legitimate reasons why they may not want to. According to the mayor, those who don't want to go to a shelter don't want to follow the rules and just want to drink all day.

A lot of the homeless have mental health issues, problems with addiction, or a criminal history. The problem with mental illness, of course, is that those who truly suffer from it are the least likely to seek help unless they have a support system in place. Many shelters refuse to take addicts unless they are clean for a given period of time, which is easier said than done. And if one has a criminal history, well, you just do. There's no way to correct that, and even if you've served your time, some shelters won't take you.

Most shelters also take only men or women, not both. When my friend Charles became suddenly homeless, I learned about all the problems this creates.

Charles' wife went to a church-run shelter, along with their two children. Like most shelters of this sort, they had strict rules about drinking and curfews. She had a job at the time and he didn't, partly because he is an "undocumented alien." They are married and she is a a U.S. citizen, so automatic green card, right? Well, no, because it takes a lot of money to go through that process, money Charles and his wife didn't have. So now he isn't able to keep a job, which is part of the reason they were homeless.

Charles was staying with me. The thing was though, he had to pick the kids up from the shelter, which was a couple miles outside of town, so that his wife could go to work. And she, of course, had to find transportation to and from work. This wasn't so bad before they lost their home, because they lived close to her job. It was significantly more difficult once she was staying in the shelter.

So Charles would have to go get the kids and then find somewhere to spend the day with them. They stayed at my house a bit, or he took them to the library or museum. Then he'd have to arrange transportation to get them back to mom at the shelter before curfew, when they had Bible study. Charles and his family are atheists, but you surrender your freedom of conscience and religion when  you become homeless in America. In fact, you lose more rights than if you were a criminal.

Lots of homeless people, especially those without children, just opt to brave the streets. Some homeless say that the shelters are often places of physical danger from others. They feel like they lose their safety, autonomy, and dignity. Then there are all the little things. If you don't have proper identification, you can't stay at a shelter. If you can't make curfew, you can't stay there (precluding you from taking certain kinds of employment).

Listening to my coworkers, listening to the radio, it's easy to believe that the homeless are a problem rather than people. I guess it's just too easy for me to see myself in that situation for me to respond that way. Losing the van a few weeks ago made our lives really difficult. Struggling with how we are going to pay for daycare, whether the Goddess can find a job that pays enough — it's just really easy to see how normal, working people could lose their home. I can't imagine then also having to deal with addiction or serious mental illness.

I drove home after reading the news about this at work. The temperatures were in the single digits. I had to pick up the seven-year-old from gymnastics.

Completely aside, I hate the other parents at gymnastics. We signed ours up because she needs regular exercise and she loves it, or otherwise I'd never set foot in that place. They have all these chairs and couches where parents sit and watch the girls and all of them are always talking about who is going to make "the team" and who is going on "the trip" that the older kids take. I'm sure they are perfectly decent people, but something about encountering them in that setting and listening to them carry on about which girls are the best makes me want to stab them with a pencil. Also, one of them drives this big stupid Escalade and has almost run me over twice.

The seven-year-old comes off the floor and goes to the dressing room. When she comes out, she's wearing boots, a winter coat, and shorts.

"You're going to freeze," I say.

"I know," she says.

The temps have warmed up since the homeless were in the news. There have been some community meetings, but I guess I'm a bad community member, because I've chosen to spend the time with my family instead.

And working. Lots of overtime, some writing, a post-holiday gig. Anything to make a little more.

Because the thought of my family out there, in the cold, is more than my heart can take.

You Better Not Mess With Major Tom

David Bowie died this week.

The Goddess and I were binge-watching "The Man in the High Castle" (highly recommended) late Sunday night/Monday morning, when the item came across my news feed. I thought it was a hoax initially, because I hadn't heard he was sick. Turns out no one had.

I've blogged about it elsewhere at length, so I won't labor the point, but I am a big Bowie fan. His music was the very first I remember hearing.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that he in one of the main reasons I chose music as a career.

So we've listened to a lot of Bowie this week, which in itself isn't that unusual. "Kooks," from Hunky Dory, is the first track on the playlist my sons fall asleep to most nights. I find myself plunking out various songs while sitting at the piano, reflecting on the times I've had with them.

There was a shooting in the neighborhood a couple nights ago, too. Drug-related. The fourth murder in my neighborhood in the last three weeks, all tied to heroin.

I guess I live in the hood. I've never really thought of it that way, and it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. Then again, I stood on my porch last night and watched a car stopping and starting down the street, looking for the right house, before stopping at the corner and dropping a package to a waiting neighbor. I mean, I don't know that it was drugs, but it probably wasn't candy bars.

Heroin and opioid pills are a big thing here in my home state. There has even been a documentary made about the Goddess' small rural county and all the pill usage up those hollows.

Our state legislature and local law enforcement seem mostly useless in combating this. The legislature is in town right now and the only thing they've proposed is drug testing welfare recipients. This, in spite of the fact that the practice does nothing to curb usage and would cost millions of dollars.

The president came to our small city a couple months back to address the issue. More people die from drug overdoses than car crashes every year, and our little state leads the nation. That's pretty depressing.

Like most problems, this one is pretty complex, and I honestly think our public leaders just don't have the energy to address it. After all, it's a moral issue, right? I mean, if these people were just strong enough, the logic goes, they wouldn't have started down this path.

I wouldn't dismiss the issue of personal responsibility, but I think it's much more complex than that. Here are just a few of the issues attending the larger one:

• Many addicts become users through legal prescriptions for pain, sometimes work injuries, like throwing out your back in the mine. Doctors who liberally prescribe the meds and then do not monitor patient usage are helping fuel the problem of addiction. Once they are prescribed no more, they make the jump to pills gotten illegally, or heroin. 
• The problem of "pill mills" in the region is serious — doctors or clinics where one can get easily get meds that are not medically necessary. There have been a few prosecutions on this front, but it's not hard to find one if you ask around.
• Too many "important" people make money from drug abuse. Our own state attorney general has a wife with a lobbyist for drug companies do have flooded our state with pills. It is unsurprising that he has refused to take on these same companies.
• Law enforcement is unduly focused on weed. Despite all the talk about marijuana being a "gateway drug," there is little evidence to support that (correlation is not causation). I honestly just think it's easier for the police to go after stoner weed dealers than gangsters with real weapons. They can pretend they are tough on drugs while essentially doing nothing.
• The state has no real economic opportunity. Our state government focuses nearly exclusively on the fossil fuel industry, which employs only a handful of people in the state. Combine this with an education system like the one in our area, and kids leave school believing they have no real opportunities. And they are right. Hustling ain't easy, but if you're young and poor, it seems like a viable option.

So I've been thinking about all this, along with the death of David Bowie.

Bowie was a junkie for a period. ("Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie," has been playing in my head all week." I think Bowie was more of a cocaine user, though I've heard it said he used heroin, too.) The thing is, if you are rich, you can just take some time off, go find yourself, get medical help, sign up for 17 weeks of rehab, and be hailed as a hero on the other side.

If you're just some poor schmuck, everyone says, "They chose to do that to themselves," and regard you as a criminal.

I don't understand this response. My ex had a cousin who died of an overdose in a Bojangle's parking lot with a toddler and a baby in the back of her car. A young married couple across town overdosed together last year, leaving a baby to be raised by family. These aren't people using drugs "recreationally." These are people in real pain who need help.

I worry about my kids. I worry about the things they will see growing up here. I worry about the kind of place it is becoming.

Those four people shot dead during the last three weeks were all dealers or users. Not my problem, right? Let them kill each other, right?

I'm glad Bowie lived to see 69. I can name a dozen others whose artistic output was cut dramatically short because they didn't beat their demons. Bird is the first one that comes to mind, dead at 34. And if you are a musician, you probably know a few junkies. It makes you wonder about all that we've lost as a culture through poison.

Neighborhoods like mine are easy for politicians to ignore. Most of my neighbors won't vote. They've got no money to spend on elections. It's an incredibly cynical approach to government.

But their lives matter and the lives of their children matter. And I'm getting tired of our leaders pretending they don't.