It was 10:00 a.m. and I had just gotten out of a conference call in my bosses office and returned to my unimpressive work cubicle. As I sat down my office phone rang and I answered. "Dad, why did you not take me to school this morning?" said the voice on the other end. "Because I tried to wake you up for an hour and you just blew me off...I had an important meeting to be at this morning and could not be late!" said I. "Well, can you come and get me and take me to school now?" said the oh so spoiled brat! "No, it takes me 30 minutes to get there, 15 to take you to school, and 30 more minutes to get back to work...I called your mom this morning and told her you did not get up to go to school so she already called the school and excused you...stay home and rest!" I replied. "Can I walk to school?" said the increasingly aggravating voice on the other end. "No! It is at least 8 miles to school and it is dangerous, stay home, mom already excused you!" My blood pressure now probably 140 over 90. "Can mom come and get me and take me to school?" ignorance is bliss on the other end. "Dude, your mom works in the same place I do, it takes her just as long, please don't make her lose work hours just because you did not want to get out of bed this morning...she already called the school, so stay home!!!" said the now wanting to choke the child parent. "Click" said the phone on the other end as he rudely hung up without saying anything else. Hoping that my child had gotten the message I went back to earning a living and tried not to worry too much more about the situation.
As I always do, I picked up my phone after returning from my lunch break to verify if anyone had left me any phone messages before getting back to the joyless task of being a government employee. Sure enough, the not so sexy female voice on the answering service reported that I had two missed calls, and two unheard messages. One would of been enough to make me anxious, two always makes a significant contribution to my inherited hypertension. In this age of technological advancements most people seem to have lost the desire to communicate verbally so instead they whip out emails. You must understand that I have been doing this job for over 24 years now and that I know that I am truly not that important as to get a lot of phone calls at work unless they are from my kids, and this usually means that they need something or something is wrong. The first message was from my son's school letting me know that I needed to come and pick up my son from school because he had been suspended. The second message was from my work's security office letting me know that a California Highway Patrol officer had called requesting that I head to my son's school because he had dropped him there after picking him up trying to walk to school. The oh not so wise young fellow had entered the school's address into his phone's GPS navigator and proceeded to walk to his destination via the quickest route...the freeway!!!
It all sounded kind of funny even amongst the frustration of knowing that he just could not do as he was told. Both, not just one of his parents had gotten the same phone calls and we headed to the dreaded vice-principle's office to try to minimize the damage of the situation. Upon arrival and after talking to some "who cares about your kid" vice-principle substitute we learned that the suspension was because a school security officer had smelled alcohol on him as the CHP officer brought him in. As later my son described it on our way back home, "a grueling interrogation took place in which I was grilled by a school security officer without mercy until I confessed to my crime, any crime, whatever crime could get him out of my face." I can smell guilty a mile away so without hesitation I asked, "OK, don't bullshit me, what were you drinking, how much, when, and why?" There is one redeeming quality to my son that I truly have mixed emotions about and so will you if you keep reading my blogs. If you ask him, he tells you the truth no matter how terrible the crime and how much he makes you cringe. It is not that he will volunteer the information, you truly have to know how to ask the question, but if you do it right he sings like a canary in a mob movie. The trick is to be specific and all inclusive, in other words, don't beat around the bush and ask him straight out forward what you really want to know. The answer was, "last night I was having a hard time writing a song so I had a few shots of rum to put me in the mood...it worked, I wrote three songs in one night..." he said in a half proud, half curious to my reaction tone of voice. "How many is a few shots...did you have any this morning?" I asked. "No dad...last night I took about five shots." He answered. This obviously explained the serenade I was enjoying around midnight that filled the empty space in my still without furniture living room. It also explained the smell of alcohol, anyone having five shots of rum close to midnight and then deciding to walk 8 miles in Southern California on the freeway close to noon the next day would probably smell like a cheap distillery if you got close enough to them.
Up to this moment I had any and all of the alcohol in my home just sitting on a couple of shelves in the kitchen pantry. I had no reason to worry, since my process of marking liquor level on the bottles had proven them to be untouched. In fact, one of the reasons for me leaving them out in the open was so that I could have a better chance of discovering the moment my kids would start drinking without having to hear it from some other angry parent in the neighborhood. Sure enough, when I got home I found the sure tale of a drunken fairy sucking the inspiration out of a bottle of single barrel Cruzan rum. Hell, at least he has good taste in rum! Interestingly enough he also volunteered the confession that he now hated rum and I should not have to worry about it because it was no longer in his choice of self medication. The scary part of it all was not that he might be lying, that I knew he was being truthful about. The scary part was that now I knew he was searching for his muse somewhere else other than from within.
My son now had a school suspension and disciplinary action review board to deal with, a juvenile court hearing, and of course two freaked out parents. It is not that we did not see it coming. Obviously we knew that this magical moment was on it's way, but truthfully, how can anyone prepare for this? In fact, I always knew that the moment he'd discover drugs and alcohol I would be facing the worse obsessive behavioural problem yet. (to be continued...)
Dad
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