No brains, no headache
South End society runs the gamut these days from Dot.com millionaires to meth-heads. You live down here in the tonier backwashes, you acquire a necessary degree of egalitarianism. That, or you move into the Gated Communities, rig up elaborate security systems and hope the unwashed masses don’t mistake the moat around your castle as a fancy hot tub.
One of our neighbors who went by the moniker of ‘Dawg’ married a woman south of me and immediately added 4 stepkids to his care. His ex was living over the mountains with two of his other kids and so, in the spirit of misguided parenthood, Dawg and his old lady hired an attorney to regain custody of those poor deprived children being raised by a single mom who’d taken up with an ex-con and worse, one on drugs. Dawg and his mizzus were also on drugs, drank heavily, but they had decided their parental skills would serve the children best.
And so they finally convinced a judge and child services to return the two teenagers to the stability and warmth of a South End home, to be raised by paragons of virtue and join the family circle. A year later Dawg and the mizzus split the sheets after she’d shacked up with an alcoholic loser on the north end and left him with 4 juvenile delinquent stepkids and his own 2 genetic ones. In the spirit of sacrifice and after considerable deliberation with myself and Jack Daniels, Dawg moved out too.
Lest you think Dawg was heartless, it should be stated he came down once a week to fill the fridge and ‘check on things’. “I just can’t be here all the damn time,” he told me. “And anyway, those kids of hers (meaning the mizzus’) hate my guts.”
The neighbors grew concerned when the parties lasted deep into the night, cars honked horns and tore out at 2 AM and numerous fights were continually breaking out. Chickens, dogs, cats, meth dealers and other animals came and went in the house whose doors were wide open day and night. The floors were urine and feces stained and the place reeked like a Texas porta-potty in August. Dawg told me his daughter — the one he’d ‘rescued’ from an abusive life — was now pregnant. She was 15, maybe 16. When she came, she was a bright and inquisitive kid. Now she could look forward to teenage motherhood.
There’s plenty of guilt to go around and I have some myself for not going to the police or child protection services or even calling some church. My mother used to tell us kids, “It takes all kinds to make a world.” And when we got to be smartass teenagers, we’d reply, “Right, Mom, that’s why it’s all screwed up.”
Dawg got fired awhile back from his job of 25 years. He ended up marrying his ex, the very same woman whose kids he took and ruined. It only lasted a year or so, then she hooked up with a biker from Seattle. I ran into him the other day. Same old Dawg. Like he always said when he lived down here: No brains, no headaches. Dawg hasn’t got either.
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Tags: Child Custody Made E-Z, It Takes a Village, Raising the Kids the Wrong Way