Dear Alexi,
The reason I am writing this, mainly, is to tell you a story, and perhaps if you see fit, you could pass this information onto your readers. My daughter Kelsey is 19, and is a blond-haired, blue eyed cutie that any young man would trip over himself to get with. When she was 17, and still in school, my beautiful, intelligent, and funny baby girl started dating a boy, against my better judgment, that we hoped would just be a passing phase.
Flash forward to graduation… my honor roll student walked across the stage to get her diploma, 7 months pregnant. Essentially, she graduated in June, gave birth to my best-buddy-grandson in July, started college in August and turned 18 in September. That all sounds like a happy ending, but unfortunately it is only the beginning of what would turn out to be one of the longest, saddest, most painful years of my life.
In October of last year, against my better judgment, the boy… let’s refer to him as “The Boy”… moved in, supposedly to “give extra hands” with taking care of the baby. Let me switch gears for a second…
I guess I need to define “The Boy” a bit. He is a product of a family that is so convoluted and disjointed, you cannot tell the who the players are without a program. His mother and father where never married. They had him when THEY were only 17. When “The Boy” was 12, his junkie mother dropped him off, unannounced, at his father’s and told him that she didn’t want “The Boy” any longer. Dad is a high school dropout, and still smokes dope on a daily basis. Dad is also married to a bi-polar-psycho-bitch, for whom they haven’t invented the right words to describe. Step mom has a horrible temper and we are sure beat “The Boy”. I have heard from the only sane one in this whole mess of a family that when “The Boy” was small, dad used to get wasted, while “The Boy” would be present. Thanks to marriages and divorces and second and third marriages, I often times have to ask “now how is this person you are talking about related to you?”
OK, so where was I? Oh, October last year… “The Boy” started showing his true colors right away… sleeping here at night, eating then disappearing until all hours, EVERY freaking day. That got old, REAL fast. He had only been here about 3 weeks, when he found his sack, and opposed me in my own home, which sent me in “Papa Bear Mode”. I told him to get his stuff and get out. Also, I told him to give me my cell phone… I was paying for his cell phone because of the baby… he told me “no”… I said “gimme my phone and get out of my house!”… he said, “no”… I leaned in REAL close, so he was sure to hear every word I said, and through clenched teeth I hissed, “give-me-my-mother-fucking-phone-or-I-will-knock-you-down”… he said “no”.
Let me pause again to describe myself: I am a big ol’ strappin’ farm boy… 6’2″, 220 lbs of shaved head, tattoos, and hard work since I was old enough to stand (and I ALWAYS wear patch-pocket Levis, BTW 
, so I have not really ever had much problem with people opposing me. Even though I am a teddy bear-and-a-half, when I have had to get mean, people always understood that I would break them in half, if I had to, and the situation would dissipate. Essentially, except for the sort of rough-housing males of all ages do, I have never laid a hand on another human being in my adult life… back to the story…
Well, I had made him a promise, and I had to keep it. I took him down, using my panther-like-ninja-farm boy skills (which means I knocked him down and jumped on him and pinned his scrawny ass to the floor). I literally had his throat under my left forearm, and had my right fist cocked back to bury it in his face, when I realized that with the force with which I was going to land the punch, I would probably kill him. I jumped off him and called the police and asked them to send out the “family crisis” team, because I knew they could help de-escalate the situation. Another first…the cops had to come to my house.
So the police came, and they had him figured out in about 2 seconds. He stood there lying to the police about the events that had just transpired, and I was sure that my daughter would see, finally, what a broken person he is, and would come to her senses. Nope, the cops made him leave the house, and the next day she moved out with the baby, to be with him.
For almost the next 12 months, I had no idea where they were from day to day. They were couch hopping, until they would wear out their welcome and then move on. They would pop up occasionally, but then would disappear. I did not even get to see my grandson for his first birthday. At several points they moved in with his father and step-bitch-mother, and that is a whole other story…I guess to shorten THAT part… the step-bitch actually started poisoning my daughter against me and my family, telling her that all we wanted to do was steal her baby, and convincing her that her own family would lie to her. Also, in the mean time, “The Boy”, dropped out of high school, just like his father, whom he idolizes, and still smokes dope every day, and never had a job until he was over 30… oh and a pack or two of cigarettes, also.
So to make a LONG story short (I know, too late!), they ran out of places to go, and in September of this year my daughter asked if they could move back in here. Unfortunately, she would follow “The Boy” anywhere he goes, so if he didn’t come, my daughter and the baby would have gone elsewhere. Having him move in was a bitter concession to knowing my daughter and grandson are both healthy and safe. She and I have talked many times about it, and she feels that she is “helping him get better”.
My daughter goes to college 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and works 30+ hours all the other days of the week. He, is unemployable… even McDonald’s won’t hire a high school drop out who can’t squirt out a clean sample. He still smokes dope daily, sleeps until noon, gets up, eats, goes back to bed, and then parties all night with his motley bunch of morons, until he rolls in around fucking-late o’ clock. She never has any money, because he drives a gas-guzzling 1980-something Grand Marquis that was his grandfathers, and she buys him smokes, and I assume his dope, so after she buys a few things for the baby, she is broke again. On the rare occasion that he is here, he sits around with his shirt off, doing nothing. If I complain to my daughter that he is a leach and a parasite, and he could at least take the garbage out, she will do it, so he doesn’t have to. At this point I am just hoping she will get tired of picking up his slack.
I am getting to the end of my patients with the whole situation. In fact, I was to the END of my patients a LONG time ago. All the while my daughter says, “he is TRYING to quit smoking weed”, which is ironic, because typically, the FIRST step in quitting something is actually QUITTING. She also says that, “he is getting better with my help”. From what I have seen over the last 4 or so months (make that 2 or so years) is that he has not changed one freaking bit. It is like he has one foot nailed to the floor and is walking in a circle, instead of even moving an inch forward. “The Boy’s” grandfather is the same brand of loser, as is his father, and as is he. I REFUSE to allow my grandson to become a fourth generation derelict!
The point of this awfully long monologue is this (Oh thank GOD! He is getting to his point!): in all the history of men and women, maybe THREE girls have ever “fixed” a boy. Unless God lights the shrubs on fire in the front yard, the only other person who can “fix” a broken boy, is that boy himself… and he needs to WANT to be “fixed” in the first place. I have seen too many girls, and now my daughter is one of them, who are attracted to a “bad boy”, but by the time they figure out that the only thing “bad” about them is that they are bad at life in general, they have wasted too many weeks-month-even-years on them. Only houses can be “fixer-uppers”, if a girl likes a boy and plan on changing him, she is in for a long, sad, frustrating, and many times, painful future. If your boyfriend would rather watch football than go to the park and have a picnic with you, and then you marry him, guess what he will still rather be doing in 20 years? If your boyfriend is a pot-head, the love of a woman is not going to clean him up, etc, etc. Girls need to be smarter, and start with a boy with similar interests and values and build from there, and let the bad boys hook up with girls who haven’t got a clue how life is supposed to work, either.
Thanks for listening.
By: boycrazy on December 9, 2010
Tags: letter to alexi, reader submission
52 Comments »
