Like every family we have skeletons in the closet. We handle annoying skeletons by yanking their lifeless bodies from the closet, then we pick off each bone, dissect it, wave it around the house, show it to some friends, then toss it to the curb. I would love to say this is because of my uber Zen lifestyle or I’m bro’s with Deepak Chopra, but it comes down to; I’m a realist who likes self reflection and just has no time for BS - I mean come on how productive can someone with a husband, 4 kids, a business, 3 dogs, a 9-5 job, and nonstop action going on, be, if you have to keep one hand holding the closet door shut at all times.
Several years ago, our great, mature, self confident, smart daughter, had back to back to back tragedies in her young life. One alone would have set anyone back, 3 plus, in a 5 month time period was too much for an 18 year old, and she crumbled. She is our first kid, and not knowing any better we sent her off to college thinking, it will pull her back on track. Eh… apparently the last place a broken hearted, middle class kid should be, is away from their parents, with a rigorous academic schedule, at a very wealthy school, where classmates have islands and helicopters.
As seen in every ABC Afterschool special, girls with turmoil, find boys that are trouble. Our trouble’s name was Gordon (of course the name has been changed). Gordon was an only child from a wealthy NY family. Gordon was a lovely polished young man whose face would pale when the boys would fart at a restaurant. The boys would perform their normal, “let’s see what the new guy is made of” routine, and crack jokes, tell embarrassing sister stories (blogs to come later J ) and general immature 7 – 15 year old boy behavior, while sizing him up. Lovely, polished, only child, Gordon was not familiar, or comfortable with this type of introduction, and would make feeble attempts at hiding his displeasure.
From November to April, as our daughters grades fell, partying increased, the “we are paying money for this” speeches amplified, and the mother daughter bond snapped. Gordon and his mother, who according to our daughter “really understood her”, and whom graciously called to offer parenting advice, with her house in the burbs, apartment in the city, vacation home at the beach, and beautiful white furniture that their one perfect little dog who always listened, became the bane of my existence.
Gordon was not a strong women’s right supporter, in our humble opinion, and was more than willing to guide our daughter in separating from her tyrannical family. In order to have any chance at saving the relationship with my daughter, I would listen and respond politely when 19 year old Gordon would call, and tell me, what I was doing wrong as a mother. (Yes you read that correctly). As you can imagine, Husband, with the vein in his forehead bulging, thinking a face to face meeting with Gordon would be beneficial, was always ready to jump in the car.
Things came to a head one morning when our daughter called scared and crying. After a night of partying, she and Gordon had gotten into a fight; he grabbed her, shoved her against a wall, and screamed in her face. It was all I could do to keep husband & 3 boys from racing to school to “inform” Gordon this type of behavior was unacceptable. As I tried to convince our daughter that it was time for the relationship to end, the boys huddled by the table making a list of people to include in a posse to go beat Gordon up. I promptly gave them the “No we are not taking a posse to go beat up Gordon, and that will not solve anything speech”, but I do have to admit, there is something heartwarming about listening to your sons, list names of people they are going to enlist to help, in their opinion, “save” their sister. Not to be left out, however, kid # 4 also submitted names to the growing list: Mr. Joe, (our 56 year old pudgy gentle poky puppy of a neighbor) and The Muffin Man –“people are going to need to eat mom”.
Ending relationships is never a smooth thing, and the fact that my sons had Gordon’s cell phone number, in retrospect, may have caused additional complications to the situation. Several weeks after the shoving incident, Gordon called to tell me, he was considering pressing charges against kid # 4, who was 7 at the time, for threatening him. I assured him that would not be necessary, reminded him that 7 year olds do not always make the best decisions, and that I was certain he would have no additional communication from my sons. I sat the boys down, gave them the “words can be threatening and you can get into trouble for texting mean things to people” speech, and told them there were absolutely NOT allowed to text Gordon anymore no matter what. I took #4's cell phone to see if he had texted Gordon, (He only had one because at the time because there was some special buy one line get a free line deal), and this is what I read:
Hey F**k Tart, get your posse ready, we are coming for you to kick you’re a$$. Don’t ever talk to my sister again and go jump off a bridge.
I went downstairs, called the phone company, had Gordon’s number blocked from our account, and we bid Gordon farewell.
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