Had a guest at the Liahona Home who mooched, lied, stole and got high. I'd find a pot pipe in his drawer, or he'd be caught with one on a traffic stop, or he'd ask another guest if that guest wanted to get high. Or borrow money from a guest and not pay it back. Or cadge smokes. Or ask another guest if he wanted to get high. Or share with everyone how he wasn’t really an addict.
Many "last chance" lectures were given. Many more than usual.
There were two reasons for that. One, his church had paid for eight weeks all at once. This after the free week and subsidized week he had got from me. I have the fees weekly for the great reason that if someone relapses, then they've lost very little money. In his case, he personally had no money invested in his living expenses at all, but I'd still hate to see the church feel bad.
But for two, and the far more important reason, was that he was 20. And I knew him. And had known him when he was 16. I knew the odds were that he'd fail, not only for me having a brain, but for everyone telling me so over and over again. And for having seen him use and abuse a kind hearted woman in that church who had took him in before.
But I still wanted him to succeed.
I had been 38 before I even started to pull my head out of my butt, and I hoped to save him a less than productive and appropriate 18 years. The day I had to expel him, the first thing I did was retch, sick to my stomach over the necessity. Fortunately I had not ate yet. To my knowledge, I was the only one who minded him leaving.
Yet as I said - I knew him. He didn't think so. I mean, we never hung out, never sparkled up, never joked inanely about 4:20, so by his standards, I couldn't know him.
Here's what I did know:
He was raised by a single ”mother”, mother by virtue of having birthed him. A single mother who enjoyed drinking and smoking pot, and who I doubt stopped or slowed down on either during her pregnancy with him. A mother who avoided work of any kind, and avoided any men who worked, lest that somehow be catching or provide any kind of good example to her various children.
A mother with an unerring ability to date losers. No real role models, no one to keep him from dropping out of high school. No reason for any child of hers not to smoke pot, any more than any of you reading this had reason not to do the things you saw your folks doing for fun.
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| The reality of pot smoking is less cool than movies make out. |
Upon turning 18, instead of going on tours of colleges with the folks, talking to a military recruiter, going on a church mission or traveling to Europe, his life was no different than the day before. Or the year before. No driver’s license, he had dropped out of school. No real jobs other than a McDonald’s job, part time. Later, a girlfriend raised as poorly, who would have a child of his when he was 19, and break up with him a few months after that kid was born.
Back to his 18th birthday, his “mother” deliberately got a bunch of bills and stuff put in his name, and then ran them up and failed to pay them. Happy Birthday, kid. That good credit that we all start out with? Blown. And he’ll never get it back. Not this side of seven years of hard work, and not as good as it could have been even then.
Understand, I’m the last to put up with those sensitive souls in their thirties and forties, still “finding themselves”. Past a certain point I tell anyone that you can’t let the first 20 year period of your life rule the next three 20 year periods.
Past a certain point.
Or as I said to another guest, one who was clearly outraged at my continued indulgence of the young man, “Yeah, I get it that upbringing isn’t an excuse for we in our middle age. But what of when the kid first turns 18? Still an excuse then, isn’t it? I see it as a continuum. As each year goes by, it’s less and less appropriate to blame upbringing, in fact it’s a pretty steep drop off. By 21, it should be half, by 25, a tenth, and well before 30, it’s time to shut up!”
But this kid was 20. Young enough that a lot of it was his mom’s fault, as surely as an aggressive pit bull is his trainer’s fault. Except this kid didn’t even have some kind of clean manly aggression, just the desires of a low-level grifter coupled with no real grifting skills.
He was one of the ones who thinks that he’s being all clever, and never realizes that he’s not fooling you, he’s just coasting off of your hope that he’ll wake up and realize that working is easier than shirking.
I watched him. I watched him receive so much, and in each case he honestly thought it was due to some Machiavellian cleverness on his part. When in reality it was due to he being around some of the kindest people on Earth - the Mormons.
Yeah, they were backing him the whole way, or - and he didn’t know this - I’d never have let him in the door in the first place. By “backing him” I mean that they were giving him their moral support, first and foremost. Any “project” of theirs I’m up for aiding in. His “backers”, both great Mormons, both who I knew, persuaded me to try him.
The church as a whole was also backing him. Morally and spiritually, which as far as I can tell he noticed not. Financially, he noticed, but figured that it must be due to how clever he was working them. Here’s a handy hint for anyone “working” the Mormons:
No one “works” the Mormons. They know when you’re ripping them off, they just hope that you’ll wake up and realize that they really do care for you and that you don’t have to lie to or bs them. Sometimes this works, and a new and productive member of their church - and the human race - is born. Sometimes it doesn’t, and then at least they were doing the good they were supposed to be doing.
While not at the high level of most Mormons, I try nonetheless to emulate them, so as to be a smidge better person myself. So I’m up for aiding those they’ve took under their wing. As much as I can, anyway.
It hurts me - as I’m sure it does them - to see someone with a ton of potential just waste it. And this guy did have potential. I knew that college, vocational schools, jobs, careers, travels were all still available to him. I knew how to get them for him. I explained to him how he could have them.
Without tipping him that I was aware of his grifting and drifting status, I explained to him some home truths to try and deter him from the life I felt sure he was embarked upon. I explained to him the obvious that I’m sure he already knew. That it was perfectly possible for a young man to drift through his whole twenties, coasting off of friends, family, and any others who seeing his youth would wish to aid him in getting him started.
But I told him of the downside to that seeming free ride. That sometime between his late twenties and early thirties, there’d be a switch flipped, and instead of people wanting to help him “get started” they’d have contempt for him having “not started”.
And that if he waited till then, that a lot of opportunities would be over, forever. That he’d have blown a great chance for a great start, and that he’d be playing second string catch up for the rest of his life. And not the least, that as a father, he needed income and stability now, not later after a decade of mindless partying.
He gravely assured me he wanted to do right. I gravely nodded my head as if I knew he meant it. Inside, I hoped and prayed fervently that he meant it.
He didn’t mean it.
He agreed to a plan, a plan that would have paid dividends to him, and for the rest of his life. A plan of saving his money from his full time work that I helped him find, of getting a car with that savings, of saving the more for his own apartment. And of the aid I could find him for furnishing that apartment, and of course, paying 20% in child support out of each check in the meanwhile, and in advance of any court order to do so, so that he’d have a better chance of being a meaningful part of his son’s life later.
He loved that plan. All the way up to the day he got paid. Then it was blown on clothes at the mall. Work boots? A pair of work jeans? Ha, ha. Just a pair of “cool” pants for each day of the week. About his whole little check’s worth.
He figured that getting a phone plan was something I’d aid him with, to go along with the iPhone 6 I’d gave him already. Even though I’d told him he’d have to pay for the plan out of that check. He told me he could “double up” on the child support payment later. I knew all this would be trouble even before I found out later that day that he was still buying marijuana.
Is this all his mother’s fault for literally “spoiling” him? Not “spoiled” in the cute way we pretend the word means, like some fortunate Cindy Brady looking girl having doting parents getting her a pony, but the old fashioned literal meaning of “rotten fruit, worthless and with no value”.
Is it his fault for having exercised no free agency in an appropriate fashion?
His mom’s after all for not having trained him to use that free agency appropriately?
His for not having figured it out anyway with that inherent bit of judgment about right and wrong that even members of isolated Papua New Guinea tribes seem born with?
Probably all that. And now it will probably be his thirties or forties when the life of consequence free hedonism and coasting off of a boyish smile runs out. When life has beat him up enough and wore him out enough so that he is - as we say in AA - “sick and tired of being sick and tired”.
That’s a real shame. Really. It bothers me a lot.
But there’s nothing I can do. I’ll pray that he wakes up sooner, and makes a better go at another home.
