Other People's Kids

Bad News/Good News

Bad news: "Josie" has continued her downward slide, particularly with regard to alcohol. She's now been busted, complete with actual physical documentation, for getting alcohol. The person who supplied it to her is in the process of being busted himself.

She also started and then lost a job working at a local bar & grill, and is about to start another job at a local hotel cleaning rooms. Yeah, that's the job for the girl who can't clean her own bathroom decently. But I guess they'll find out soon enough. I'm learning to pick my battles, and this is one I'll just watch from the sidelines, I guess.

Her mother went insane and bought her a cell phone, agreeing to be responsible for her paying her bill every month. That's like agreeing to underwrite life insurance for everybody in the middle east against getting shot or blown up.

I think "Josie" is about down to her last female friend, though she still has a steady stream of boys that come sniffing around regularly.

So much for the bad news. It's a little backwards, but while I can mostly freely divulge the bad news in this case, I can't go into all the good news. I can tell you that against all sanity we still have a chance to keep this girl, and possibly give her a new start. More about that probably in the next month or so.

The very best news is that while she's being more or less busted for minor possession or the equivalent, she actually ended up telling the cop the truth about what happened and who did what. Oh, she lied her freaking tail off at first...but then at her friends urging she stopped the cop just as he was leaving after taking her statement and basically rewrote the thing.

I'm proud of her. That was a big step.

She also broke down while talking to The Wife today, and while she's very good at going for the dramatics The Wife got the idea that she was sincere in much of what she was saying. She wants out of this town, which is wise. She recognizes that her reputation here will not allow her to get a fresh start. That's the slimy, dark underbelly of small-town life that they didn't tell you about in the Andy Griffith Show but that anybody who grew up in a small town knows about.

You know everybody, but everybody also knows you, and once you've been marked as a jock, or a geek, or a brain, or whatever you happen to be, then that is what you are FOREVER. "Josie" happens to have been marked, more or less, a white-trash slut. I'd like to see anybody try to live that down in a small town. It's harder than it sounds, especially when you're as pretty as she is, plus she's been conditioned to wear the wrong clothes, encourage boys the wrong way and hange out with the wrong crowd. Her role models suck...her mom is one of the local bar flies.

Anyway, we have a plan. As I said, I can't share it right now, but I will soon. It's exciting. It's liberating. And it's gonna be really, really fun, I think.

I mentioned before that I was thinking summer would bring a slowdown in blogging, and it looks like that's coming true. I also anticipate that with the end of summer not only will my desire to blog pick up, but my material will almost certainly be bizarre and exciting.

Stay tuned. It could get a little rough.

posted by Dan @ 7:37 PM