A child welfare worker should have to watch a certain litany of films, read certain works of fiction and non-fiction
before recieving the credentials necessary to investigate families and endanger them. He or she must leave their preconceptive
prejudices in their past and be new more improved humans.Each should do Peace Corps duty in a third-world country or
the poverty pocket s of first-world jerks like the USA.
Furthermore each should be expected to take all their belongings and family and move into a shack one-third or less the
size of the home they are used to, with no money or resources to build shelving, closets, and storage , and while living amidst
this "full house", be inspected by severely limited thinkers who have no idea of their story , for child neglect due
to things filling the home.
Each who begs of the welfare agents to understand that they couldn't just throw their beloved things out just because
they temporarily had to move down in life and were hoping to climb up the ladder again soon , and that's why they kept
the family dog, too, although they couldn't afford vet check-ups or real good flea killers temporarily,
they hoped to soon--- shall be given all the respect suggested by a dirty look .Seperately their children will
be quizzed "Is your house really always this messy or did you really just move here ?" And, "Come on, you don't
have to be afraid to tell me the truth. I'm here to help you ." That there isn't enough places to hide the winter
clothes, scuba gear, toys, books, litter boxes, puts the down-sized family under direst attack. Their pimples show. Their
betters are congratulating themselves for their large closets, garages, attics, basements, sheds, storage systems with
pull-out plastic drawers ....while systematically charging the losers with bad parenting for not affording these things. And
having Stuff, George Carlin-type Stuff. Sort of in plain sight all over their house . You want to say the house is messy but
you don't discern any laundry piles, which is the usual piles of Stuff you take kids away from screaming mothers for.it's
like, stuffed animals, backpacks, books , magazines laying around everywhere, a printer covered with papers and photos--it
looks messy but you can't show filth in the photo. it's useless. You can't take these kids over this. You have to let them
have "Stuff." But you won't get it until it happens to you, and you keep a few boxes packed after your next move, too. Shoot,
I'm living out of boxes, you'll say to pals over martinis with a laugh, not daring to think about the families you began digging
around in drumming up violations for after you judged them for having boxes of stuff, ultimately seperating them forever
of misguided efforts to better society.
So, everyone with the power to snatch children and parents from each other, sisters from their brothers, must go through
the humiliating experiences of having more stuff then they can "put away" and being misjudged due it.
Another requirement is that, nice people as they are and all, they are going to toughen up by managing their
children and self on $3,300 a year a piece , with only medical bills and prescriptions (not over -the-counter drugs
and ointments) covered, for a duration of not less than 36 months.
I am not being cold here nor am I lampooning society--my children and I , a total of three people, recieve
less than $10,000 a year total to survive on , and I lose my Medicaid and $2000 a month medications if I earn, find,
or am given or lent one cent more.For example, if I get free rent somewhere by a sympathetic aunt or grandma, it would be
counted at its value , say, $500 a omnth, and I'd be said to earn that much more a month and thus disqualified from Medicaid.
The same goes for if I get dental work paid by a parent, my electricity paid for by a church one month.Adopted
by a family at Christmas, if you want to know the truth, and that's where people's good hearts come in. We all are responsible
only for what we know but we are also responsible for knowing.
We all sort of heard once how a migrant family almost lost their Medicaid because a teen was saving for college
or something, and have our opinions on it, but sort of , if shook, would admit we realize that people getting financial aid
while on our tax-funded disability and medical programs are --we hope--checked out to ensure they don't collect too
much income to qualify, and that monetary Christmas and birthday gifts from us to our kids on SSI or foodstamps shouldn't
count because they are really struggling, so we aren't going to report it, that would defeat the purpose of it, as the
recipient would lose that much or more in government aid and have to travel and sit in long queues to report it, be
docked, and get their full benefits restored after prooving the gift was one -time only with a notarized letter from
you. Acch, the trouble you accidentally put your kids through, trying to do it right! Then the social worker says to you,
you mean you only ever gave them money for their birthday once? This isn't every year like we're accusing, that's what you're
trying to straighten out, all these back charges and fines for failure to report the last 5 years--if you only gave them money
one time, why the hell did you mess everybody up by reporting it! Just keep your mouth shut, that's what everybody else does!
They understand what the system will do to them if they say something. You'd better catch on . Ask people.."
So they don't report that a family gave them $100 along with food and toys and clothes for Christmas.Everyone knows,
but it's not mentioned officially.
Barbara Ehrenreict wrote in her book on the moddle class, that a neighbor on SSI took in ironing under the table and
babysat and cleaned houses, because no one could make it on that low an income, so everyone on it virtully sneaked in income
they hid.
At first when I read it I was angered by the woman's and the author's attitude.
it isn't true that we all do it--I don't--so I am really living off less than $10 grand a year for a family of 3 while
those with that attitude, aren't really. So the hurt on me is not on them and they get by alright and feel no serious call
to change it. If they go public someone will see their photo in the paper and say they are the nanny next door anyway
and get them in trouble with Social Security. So they are passive about their suposed income of $545 a month, and $180 per
child.Which leaves me alone to protest it, because I'm the only one really living off it.
Maybe your mom makes lunch daily for all your kids, and everyone at church gave you their old furniture so you didn't
have to buy any, and you knit custom afghans for people for $40 cash, about 1 a month. And your latest date
paid your utility bills and car repairs a few times already, to put stardust in your eyes.You aren't really living off what
I'm living off, with no extra food coming from any quarters at any time, no brother out here fixing my roof for free...grandparents
always get the kids schoolclothes, and Christmas clothes, birthday clothes. or gift certificates, in every family
I know, besides my own , which sends plain cards. And no one is reporting this activity, you don't at the Social Security
office deal with thousands of letters a week as kids have birthdays across the land claiming extra income of $300, a
Nintendo, whatever, mucking up the machinery as intelligence everywhere in all field offices must be brought to bear on decisions
whether this gift cuts the family off of $300 worth of medicine next month or $300 of income or both.
we're all silent on this whether we help the poorest members of our families, or churches, are the poorest, or are the
social workers and ministers, teachers, Scout Leaders and so forth or folks who adopted a family at Christmas--none
of us butt into others' lives by calling Social Security and anonymously reporting that such-and-such a family was adopted
at Christmas, got their car repaired by my sucker husband, etc., or treated to a $250 vacation at Disney by my church---and
should be docked accordingly of their medicines and income...
It's kind of how we help them , because we can't change each one's life, but to each we can be nice. And we are this
way even about parents who rub us the wrong way, are abrasive or commonly drunk; we are like the mother in "The Bad Seed",
letting the drunken mother of the boy her daughter killed visit her and cry. We are polite to the repulsive, attentive to
the pain inside.
Except some of us. Some of us are nasty because we're talking to a toothless old hag, the label ours. We have this crowd
in a neat little category --dirty dishes piled high in both sinks, in cold dirty water perhaps: when we get an anonymous call
that doesn't pan out but the family is "different", nontheless, sharing some of the components of those ones we always take
the children from--things aren't put away ( there are no storage areas),the electric or water has been cut off (they're hurting
), the mom has missing teeth or a disease associated with needles although hers isn't and she can proove it but
no one ever asks or lets on they don't believe her.Ach! I ache to see such lovely young flowers in such poverty and
misery--I'd love to get them in nicer homes--I wish the mother was a hair closer to the line ! But give me some time, I'll
get her for something...
We must have compassionate child welfare workers, interested in the family , not just the children .The one who came
to my house last week, Dan Black, had zero interest in me. He told my kids he could help the kids get whatever they didn't
have so to be truthful . I told him I needed new beds for them and he had no interest in that whatsoever and looked at me
like"Beds, Ha!-That would help you stay together! Duh!" He said "I'm just doing this because I care about the kids."
I said "I care about them more than you do!" If he cared, he'd have gone to our website and learned about us first, to
know who he was meeting and what they were like. You just have to run a search on me to get there. He cares about the
littlest of anyone we've ever met, less than many.What he cares for is his agenda that led him to this career choice.But his
contempt for the poor as self-immolating is evident in that he had zip interest in that I had a defibrillator and didn't pursue
it with any questions like "What's wrong with your heart?", treating me like the able-bodied poor he deals with most often,the
addicts. There are some on Social Security Disability--usually SSI--for drug addiction. he has no interest in distinguishing.
All these moms with missing teeth and subsequently weak jaws, all one and the same self-centered druggie bitch, and freaked
out nerves while he and police tower over them, seperating them from their kids as if they were criminals, then making
note that they were nervous and tense and angry individuals who needed anger management training--
all the homes alike, 5 guys on the couch dozing on heroin, mom hitting up in front of the kids, dad drunkenly raping
the teen daughter --it's a given.
Well Dan Black you should ask and pay attention. my ex-husband videotaped the nasty
visit we got from you and the cops and you are by far the nastiest people the kids have been exposed to in the last
10 years. And the rudest ever to enter my home. You didn't ask, just assumed, but this house is always only the three of us,
always together alone, except when their dad hangs out. he does that because it used to be the four of us , having all sorts
of aventures together--through 19 states and into 3 countries, on moonlit walks and sharing food over a campfire--we did everything
as a family. Medicaid made us divorce. So the kids are still the happiest and most at peace when it is the 4 of us like always.
We go to church regularly as a family still, for example, and all the Focolare meetings. He takes any of us to our doctor
appointments or the E.R., the rest come along. We are a very close family filled with love.
Because he and I did not party, did not drink at all, did not have keggers, go to them, leave our kids with sitters,
know drug-users, use drugs--we did not have any people coming around, hanging out,t he way they do as adults when drug buds
or childless. Our church art and study of the Bible and children were our lives, and we didn't need immature unemployable
friends. We owned and operated a respected business for 10 years after the founder died. Our days and eves were filled to
the max without having wasted people sitting around our house. besides we had a bunny in the bathroom and he used the toilet.
We didn't have room for visitors.
Once we moved here it got even worse because I was ashamed of the poverty --I could not afford to have the
lawn mowed etc.so we looked like that other kind of poor--the kind you hate to love.Therefore I never had my classy friends
over from other counties, it wasn't like I had my decorator touch to show off, not in this setting. The intent was always
to move on up ASAP.
Thus , the only people who ever came in my door between Sept 2000 and June 2003 were my sister, her boyfriend of 32 years,
our ex-employee Walton, and his girlfriend Patricia.
And my maid.
And I mean, period. Nobody else has EVER been in here since I moved here.Neither have I ever left my
children alone or in someone else's care and gone out, to dinner, a date, all night, or even 5 seconds. I have never
left Marina's side til she started school last fall. I don't date or go off with friends, not at all ever ever even
once .The three of us are always home , and no one else is ever here.
"Call me if you need me," Dan Black told my daughters
with a straight face, a very serious, misguided-man-on-a-mission face. Possibly distrusting me because I slammed the door
in his face the first time he came here and said I thought he was just some bum from the methadone clinic when
he came the next time . I am feisty , I admit, but I'm good to the bone, man, I have a good heart and I treat people,
really, very decently when they aren't puppets of an anonymous caller on a vendetta and threatening all I hold
dear.And coming off with a nasty persona first.
But he pictures us wrong. Instead of seeing us laid open as we are on our websites--a threesome of females that only
goes to church, Bible group and school, the library, and doctors, he imagines the children will be neglected enough, un-noticed
enough around here to slip him a phone call , tell him they're frightened of a man I have living here or lonely
and abandoned days ago or sick of the beer I won't quit. He has me figured up for one of those. I know them--they danced topless
when young, had kids at 17, had several domestic disturbances responded to by police concerning several different
boyfriends.Got probation once for worthless checks, have one DUI . Schedule 3 Pills in their purse, like Wynona Ryder, they
can't explain.They've been marginal all their lives. How do I know? My boyfriend Jay took ISS at USF, got a degree but didn't
care to work with the kind of people going for social work, didn't want them for his contemporaries, found then to be non-thinking
puppets. So he is an assistant high -school coach . But while he studied the courses, so did I, an inveterate reader
who also typed his thesis and term papers. One textbook was about the marginalized people, with impersonal observations
and conclusions from impersonal mathematical studies , the 5 or 6 id'ed marginalized each given a long dry chapter.I know
who Dan Black thinks I am. The ex-dancer, the rebellious , emotionally -14 quintessential lazy drug-abusing part of a
druggie crowd of worthless-feeling macho men he can't stand and wants to protect innocent young budding females from. I'm
the common tripe or scarlet whore-monger , the trumpet swan, the tart who facilitates, newspaper after newspaper til
he couldn't stand it another day and enrolled in his community college to personally make headway against these loose women
who facilitated the access these sick perverts had to these dear young girls, God's lovely wild flowers.
Cept he's as off as you can get. If he's using a compass and he's in Libya's desert he better bunker down in a hole
in the sand cuz his sense of direction's wrong.
What made him read us so wrong? Expectations before he got here, for one. A boorish personality and dulled senses
and low interest levels in people, for another. he should have treated me as much like a full citizen with rights and society's
concern as he treated the rest. If they cared what the children had to say they needed to care where the mom was at, asked
her gentle questions, listen to her responses, respond to her shining soul , hopes and fears, and weary eyes with as
much love as to the cute childrens'. Brought out the same qualities from her they seduced from the children--a frankness
and vulnerableness stemming from trust that these strangers really cared.Then they'd know her much better already, having
coaxed out her best her under less than ideal circumstances.
They need to understand about depression too, and how the right meds could change things so drastically the whole
family would feel blessed to the bones, if Mom does leave chores waiting or yells a lot or is irritable or anxious
since she got on chemo or was told her disease was incurable or whatever.So like when you get a breast-fed baby that's
a FTT, you try her on formula first, see if she gains rapidly because Mom's not nursing right. And when you get a bitchy mom
on meds whose packet inserts one after another stress that depression is an unaviodable side effect in over 65 % of users,you
try to clean up the altered serotonin levels before you break up the family that wants to be a family. You''d think this was
all common practice but neither is, not to give breast-fed Failure-to -Thrives bottles before taking them from the parents,
not to help depressed moms regain their composure before threatening their family and privacy..
So my ideal social worker criteria would include education on depression, and assistance to a loved one suffering
it, such as living with her a few weeks and helping her before qualifying for a job in the field.
I would also have them innocuously observe the family at play at least one day before "moving in on them"--follow
them to the park, beach, museum and see the love,laughter, closeness of this family .Attend discreetly the school function
where the child is to recieve award--this is not impossible. between the time the social worker went ot my kids' schools
the second week of Aprila nd asked them all those questions she must have lost her notes on because they asked them the same
ones all over again yesterday, June 6 , and yesterday, each of my daughters was honored publicly at school . The investigator
could have learned this info from the schools and been there, unbeknownst to us, observing us.It would have cost the same
gas as he used up yesterday, and the cop cruiser gas could have gone to a real emergancy, and the cops with it.
But why be careful, considerate, kind about anonymous allegations , heavy ones,? Just rough the mom up. This guy was
so set in his rote path of ritual, he sort of knocked my husband out of the photo in his brain. At the door Dan was asked
if he lived there and he said no; then the man said what's your name and he said "Myers. Dan". Then everyone let him
go wherever he wanted, so he got to sit on my couch while an officer held me back at the door, refusing to let me in to sit
down although I'm with a 15% ejection fraction here.Pushing me back in to this worst corner of my house, where i never go,
making me stay there.They interviewed the kids for 20 minutes and I assume searched for drugs as that was the complaint they
had to by law investigate--illegal drug abuse in front of minor children ,the only anonymous complaint they weigh seriously
enough to do a police search within a day.
At the close of the inteview one asked who drew the picture of a gun on the back door.
"Dan Myers."
"Who's he? Is he a relative?"
"he's our father."
"your real father ?"
The kids nodded. End of subject. I don't think Dan Black ever realized it was the guy on the couch at all.he sure
didn't ask Dan any questions about my mothering abilities.
Most of the invasion centered around obvious complaints from Patricia such as that our oven didn't work, we
had no water service and the kids were living with filth and dirty dishes piled high and a filthy bathroom--(all the signatures
of the water supply being cut off. Duh!) and the kids were always hungry and I had oxycontin and did pot.
"Your mother
takes a lot of medicines?"
"Yes, some,"
"Does she get oxycontin?"
"I don't know what the names of any of her medicnes
are."
"Have you ever seen her use pot?"
"No."
"How about you , Marina?"
"Oh right she's going to smoke it in front
of me and not Mary," Marina should have blurted. "No," she said, tired of this; she's been asked the same question by
the same people 3 times since last October. Like her answer might change.
'have you seen pot in this house?"
"No."
<You're not covering for anybody..."
Silence. Man clears throat."You
mean you can guarentee me , and i won't find out you've been lying to me, that if we gave your mom a drug test tonight
she would pass it?"
They were really low here, boy, really preying on their ignorance in their youth. They probably don't administer drug
tests just like that--the details hidden in what they didn't say that day were that devil in the details --if they could
drug-test me,which they could only do that night if I was drinking and driving erratically,the kids better change their tales
or be considered liars.l
My friends are different types of folks. Some are very unabashedly love freeks,
they hug hello and goodbye, with warm, meaningful contact; they say they love me as we ring off the phone; they have words
like "Love" and "Tranquility" painted on stones at their front door; they 've hand-stitched a poem about love they liked
and hung it on their homey wall, their original tunes on their CDs are about a universe of loving people , the Very
Aim of Life, to some, or the Ambition of life, like my ancestor on my paternal grandfather's side said, "A man's reach
should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for ?" *
Then there are the 'stoic " trueblues, good and kind but not huggy or lovey in speech, maybe a lot of German , Swede
in them, I I've not studied the emotional veracity or variations in ethnic types at all, learning a lot by my own observation
that I preferred not to taint with empirical knowledge first. Jay warned me, when I started going through (learning) his textbooks
and required reading ; he thought i sholud know that with my brilliance and creative mind I might be mad at him some day for
exposing me to theories treated as fact that closed off avenues of thinking, directions to take our ideas for society or the
individual in it, , that I might prefer to use my own keen observational skills to conclude what I do
from/of people, unhampered by the uncomfortable awareness of how it's said to be. I may not want to see the futility
of swimming the tide. Coloring outside the lines is just suposed to be about buying a fast car, right?
I reluctantly agreed that it was a field that did not rely on the observations of its founders, organizers, Jay's predecessors,
copious stupid.studies and some neat ones like how many times people answered a payphone ringing in the California
desert. It can be done by two people on a desert island, this study of people, personality, personality aborrhations, handling
people in well-documented as" likely to be explosive "situations; and the class everyone skips, the previous in
a just, judicious, courteous, classy, empathetic manner while naturally loving and being loved by all you touch
so that enlightenment and change for the better are two of your legacies to those you 'll never meet; and longer
life, family life, life of a quality not going to happen before you came along and roared your indignation to the heavens,
your legacy to those fortunate enough to live in your era, your town, the place God planted you for you to be watered
by the Living Waters and bloom .
I had already maybe read too much: Sartre, Hesse, Camus' The Plague,and various essays by so many of those
dudes (and lassies), and "Growing Up Absurd" and "Unheavenly City " and "Unheavenly City Revisited" and "On Being and Nothingness"
and this cool compllation of pro-con essays called Juxtaposition and well if you're a social worker show me your
books and I'll show you. (Social workers are one of the few types that have actual bookshelves of books.)(Maybe I mean, worth
reading.)
I still had a lot to learn, which God let me do gracefully. I wrote a journal 4 to 6 hours a day from the age of 11 on
and except for the year my mother , instructed by the Holy Spirit, threw one in the incinerator (I was 16) and the years(
age 19-22) while I established a life as far from her as possible physchologically and physically, I have every one. And so
you can see my immature thinking, you can see it mature. And it took me a long time to get it about poverty I'd romanticized
it as a carefree (careless) youth, drawn to it. First off my parents forbade contact with certain people because they were
poor. Inferior. At summer camp when I was 12 I blended with an 8-year-old Mexican girl named Maria Lopez..I was
mesmerized from the moment I met her. To me she was in the most dazzling, cutest clothes, if I'd been asked what she
wore; in reality, her white sweater 's sleeves went halfway to her wrists from her knobby elbows and was too tight in the
shoulders; her knee socks were small and pulled up all the way , which was a style faux-pas, and still did not go anywhere
in protecting her from thorns, burrs, mosquitoes.And like that wasn't a good enough reason to chuck 'em and get new ones for
probably 55 cents back then, they were unraveling, threads hanging off ,as was the one sweater she had, which she had to wear
to flag-raising every morning because even in that she froze, her hands curled in the little square decorative pockets,
as quite chilly air accompanied the typical fog slowly rolling off Lake Huron to reveal the oceanliners
on the horizon by lunch and the sun drying the dew off the woods long after ten, when everyone had to go in and hunt for moss
or arrows they shot wild , and Maria had such short socks.
I didn't wonder those many winds ago why they didn't give her clothes on a par with the others so she wouldn't stand
out--what would it have cost them? But perhaps there was no them, just departments trained not to act outside their
jurisdictional limits (even more so now in the age of lawsuits), no one personally forced with the issue of taking on the
responsibility or not. maybe the family hid the fact the girl came unprepared, as you were strictly to bring all items on
the list or be left behind at the buses. In that case the counselor would have been the first to know she did not have clothes.
That counselor was or seemed to be one of the most caring there; her name was Rosie ( see my page on camp with her
at
http://www.homestead.com/topwebsite/cyo.html ) Garbarino and the little girls adored her. She always had a passle of them glued to her, wherever she walked. She could
not extricate herself from them. Maria was left out because she was the object of derision for the main girls , the
ones actually holding each of Rosie's hands while second-top dogs held the girls' hands and third, theirs; the
most popular girls in the cabin, as usual that way because they were heartlessly critical of others and girls didn't
want to be on their "taunt" list so they taunted with them like they were of like mind, and thus safely on the
"cool" list. Maria had been given everything by God:
beautiful brown skin that bright colors looked dazzling against compared to my pasty white stuff; giving me
a drawn, dragged-out look in bright colors; beautiful hair -- thick, shiny black--mine was a mousy brown with
no sheen, no shine, always drab, baby-fine; a stunning face--it's not even been duplicated yet to give you a frame of reference.
The closest person I've seen to her was the little boy who played Jai on the Tarzan TV series in the 1960's--he had her exact
accent, voice (husky), and similar beauty. She did not only look Mexican but South American Indian also, with direct
big brown eyes, a mouthful of beautiful sharp little bright white teeth, an infectiuos natural warmth. She was
so entertaining, so fun to haang around. All the older girls ignored her too,. Thre were no black people at camp yet, not
for another 2 years. There were no Asians, not even adopted ones. Maria was one of maybe even only one Mexican. And nobody
wanted to know her. I couldn't understand it. At night,as the twilight faded or the campfire flared, her eyes were the
only diamonds there.
My mother saw her hugging me goodbye, making me promise to come next year, ctubborn, hanging onto me, and my choice to
stay with her til her brother showed. My mother wanted to go, said the little migrant girl could wait with an adult,.., made
me leave. Told me not to befriend that child , rediculed me . I sat and wrote a poem about how the ignorance wasn't the migrant
children's, it was the people's judging them, holding them second-rate humans. making it more than one humanity. They had
humanity to man, just not to half-apes.
I romanticized the struggle, read The Jungle,( poor, used meat-packers) The Grapes of Wrath ( poor used
grape-pickers), James Baldwin...Irene deRosier and I ran around in 1975 photographing homeless winos we drug up downtown and
under bridges , in portrait-sized grainy black and white pics Irene developed-- I was keen on making a book. Her camera
, the greyscale ,showed the cleffs of their chins, the hard little plastic-tine like hairs growing through their chins, eyes
that already looked coffinized, unseeing.I can see now how i saw them as homeless bums, winos, as if you see one you've pegged
them all. Each had a whole shade of a larger story and each had a story standing on its own.
Here is what I think a man able to take children away from a lady with a year or two left to live based on one anonymous
phone call or two from the same source should ask the family, leisurely:
"
Hi can I come in; we know you dropped your food stamps and now we've got an anonymous complaint that the kids are hungry;
we are concerned. perhaps we can get you back on track with foodstamps. Do you need them?"
(yeah, dream on, everyone who's
ever been to DCF would say emphatically here )
Ok, more serious, here. As you talk to the kids, instead of grilling them about whether they have the guts to bold-face
lie to you if you can turn around and drug-test mom and tell if they're lying or not , do they dare still say mom
doesn't smoke pot in front of them?When a positive drug test means they are
lying?
___(Do you think my children are stupid, Dan Black? Their young minds immediately raced around the problem. They told
you I didn't use pot. You challanged their statements, saying that you could--guess what, let's get scared here--drug
test mom now! And if the drug test showed mom uses pot, --what? What, Mr. Black?
You wanted the kids to assume it meant
they were lying to you.By not accepting their answer of no, you were badgering them to change it so they could go on with
their lives. Do you really want to say no? Are you sure? Is that your final answer? if we test mom tonight , will it show
that YOU'RE LYING?--But it would not proove they were lying at all Mr Black and you know it. Of the few people I know who
still smoked pot ocassionaly after they had kids, none--NONE--told the kids a hoot about it. They hid it from them--the pipe,
the smell of smoke--they did it while the child wasn't around.I'm talking guys who had their youngest finish high school in
2000 and their kids would never dream dad once did pot, let alone while they were growing up.Nobody tells their
kids, Mr. Black, probably because they don't want to put them in that position of having to lie to an authority
one hopes exists to help them, be their friend--the police.
But then you're assuming I never stepped in the middle class, don't go by the code of your old college friends but by
the one of the marginalized addicts who even have sex in front of their kids.You think I am sall my life always here next
to the shadowy people of the streets who don't look so enchanting in the glare of police mugshot flashbulbs and
on the Florida prison websites. But I came here crying and screaming and nearly threatening suicide, I so rebelled
against God's plan to have me living in this area, this house, this squalor . I was not graceful at all. I would have
been awful about the stable on Christmas Eve, too.
I may have grown up in more money than you, Mr. Black.We had so much more than most of the people I went to school with,
all the way through, and none were poor, all lived on acres of farmed land when I did, in my new neighborhood at 13
we all lived on ski lakes and boated , ice-fished, snow-moblied,and water - skiied reverantly. There were no black
people in the school district at all, and no Maria Lopezes.There were no poor sides of town--we all lived in one developement
or another. Everyone fueled at my dad's huge marina. We had a cabin in the woods up north on a cold fishing river because
my family fly-fished; it isn't a cabin by Tampa standards, would be a $150,000 house here now--it was 1,200 sf, had
2 bedrooms, a fireplace, all pine paneled, and a guest house with 2/1, on 35 acres with over 3,350 sf of river frontage. Wild
blueberries filled our pancakes all summer, rapberries our cereal.
Every winter the pipes froze and we turned off the pump and had no running water during snowmobile season. We hauled
it up from the river up a steep slippery bank and went unshowered 2 weeks in the American Spirit of roughing it, of
mimicking Pioneer days that we all like to do .No one would havecalled DCF without fear of going to jail for the prank. There
was no gestapo here, we enjoyed and luxuriated in our freedoms. If told a U.S. state would try to take
our kids away 40 years later for no running water for a few days , we'd have refused to believe it at all. Nobody would let
it get that serious that it bordered on dementia like that.
I would suggest asking the kids where they grew up, where threy've been, where they like best; did their parents work,
at what, or used to work doing what, then one got sick, huh, oh, both did? That must have been hard for you, when your income
went way down lke that.
What do you all do as a family? Are you all together a lot in the evenings/ Oh yeah, every evening?
What do you do. I see you have a huge stack of family games . (let them talk) I see you all have 3 computers, I guess you
each have one? (Now control your impulse to ask who stold them for us, mr. B, and ask this instead) : What do you like about
computers/ I see you have cable tv. What shows do you like? What shows do you like, Mom? What do you consider quality
programming for the kids, what do you think is on that's good? (Hint: the crowd you think I hang with will say "Rikki
Lake." A good mom will say," well, The National Geographic channel has some good stuff" or,"we just saw this documentary following
4 ladies to the South Pole that was absolutely fascinating! ". A good mom may also begin to relax cuz someone is FINALLY interested
in them and offer you a cup of coffee but if she doesn't she is still a good mom, just too poor to have a coffee habit.)
Do you get my drift, mr. Sir? (I can't bring kind sir off my gums) The kids will open up and tell you what was at Busch
Gardens, who was afraid, one teamed with mommy and one daddy, sister gave me a Scooby-Doo! , they are excited to have attention
,let them talk and you will learn a lot.
And Good Lord don't take kids from good close relationships with their mom or dad because it smokes a little POT! You're
all not getting it yet, but it is not a gateway drug but just one of many drugs a troubled or depressed person tries
out, and it doesn't provide what they need, so they go on to the cocaine or junk or drunks they need because pot didn't alter
their unrest enough. And man you people gotta start keeping those copius notes you take, instead of inspecting my oven
every month suspiciously when I have a microwave-convection oven across the counter. And on the tape my ex videotaped of you-all
searching my house, I say,"I was in the shower when he knocked."
Mr. Black says "You were just in the shower?"
Me:"Yes"
Mr
B:"Do you have running water here?"
Me:"Yes"
Mr. B"Can I see it? Show me."
What is painful to me as I leave my children to social services on my death soon is how the main man here didn't
give me a passing glance of his limited attention span. he didn't ask me why one leg is twice as big as the other and if I'm
scared and how can they help and what did i mean by that tooth was life or death? he sneered at me as if my tooth tale were
all out of whole cloth and me an asshole.I am dying and in danger and he wants me to put home inspections once a week as I
pack to move with cardiomyopthy and spinal stenosis as my main concern, not my health.
I will never die and let him or people like him well-meaning as they may think they are in charge of the welfare of my
children.He is blind and injust and not humble.
Thank you for my allies, Lord. Help them to see past any abrasive or negative qualities I own to my true devotion to
you and your will, and understand me.Bless us,keep us, protect us, allow us to dream and hope and get clean with running waters.And
everyone else in the world likewise, hold us in your loving hand, make us part of your perfect plan. Deanne
* Robert Browning
