And Now To Jon

Josie had a boyfriend named Jon. I think about him a lot. It seems like God's Hand was in Jon. I bet Jon never thought about it.

His first words to her were, "Hi. I'm Jon", as a way of introduction. He hung around with Ricky and a whole bunch of other pot-heads. That was their biggest vice, drinking and smoking pot. They're pretty nice, I thought at the time, except I didn't approve of their extra-curricular activities. They were sort of like modern-day Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer types. On their big list of no's was education, jobs, and conforming to society. On their yes list was smoking pot, drinking, and listening to rap. All of these were a remedy for their crappy home lives.

Those were the hardest times I ever had as a parent. Send Josie's friends away, and risk her being even more attracted to them and their lifestyles. Or let her figure things out for herself and watch her very closely. As it turns out, that's not a very good option either. When you live in town, it's hard to limit any kind of activity. Just go out your front door and there's everybody, good and bad alike.

Josie took to Jon just like that girl took to James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. A good girl from a good family with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Jon's dad was a former meth-cooker who was run out of town and resides in North Carolina; his mother is hooked on drugs of all kinds, including meth, living with a boyfriend twenty years her senior. Jon lived with his grandparents, who are clean but were raising their great-grandchildren, Jon's sibling and uncle. Four generations under one roof. Jon had anger issues to boot.

So many times I wanted Josie to break clean of him. So many times I suggested to her that she needed to get clear of him because he would take out his anger verbally on her. She would cry, and that was heartbreaking. Josie did try to break up with him at least a couple of times, but somehow he would end up grabbing her heart again. Young love is stupid and inexplicable.

My animals, suspicious to most, loved him. That told me a lot. He was just angry. And because he didn't have a good familial support system, the only way he could keep his feelings down were to smoke pot.

Josie helped him with his homework. She jokingly called him a fresh-more, because he was supposed to be a sophomore but failed and was taking the ninth grade over again. Josie was only in eighth grade. She told me, "I feel sorry for him, Mom. He doesn't even have his own room to study in. There's no place for him to sit with his homework. His room is a hallway. Jenna's baby and Jenna have to have the other bedroom." So I guess that made the both of us who felt for Jon, and wished to help him be a better person.

I felt a tad of affection for him, because even though he smoked pot and drank, he never wanted Josie to do it. He would call and make sure she was at home. He didn't let certain people around her. He punched a kid who offered her a cigarette. He told her he didn't want her to have a bad life like himself. And he said he'd never do meth, not ever. And he meant it. That was because meth stole his childhood away from him. When he was eight years old, all Jon wanted to do was play baseball, but his dad wouldn't play with him because Jon senior was too busy cooking meth.

I didn't know how to help him, that was the trouble. I was frightened for him. I saw him not doing right towards himself, and I could see the path of his life. Like the trajectory of a ball, you can see the arc of it and where it's going to land. Jon was going to crash. He had no respect for the law. Josie, even though she loved him, would tell him he was stupid when he admitted his shoplifting sprees from the electronics department in Walmart and Best-Buy. To this day, I don't know where his friends got the money for gas to get to these places. They hadn't a dollar between them.

The last time I saw him, I tried to talk him into going to church with us. Josie had almost talked him into it. We'd been working on him for a few months. He didn't want to go because he felt like people would be judgmental towards him. His family was poor. He didn't think he believed in God. I knew he needed a support system to change his path.

The last time I talked to him it was via phone; he was angry at Josie. She was crying, he was accusing her of being unfaithful. I knew this was Angry Jon, the Jon who needed help. I told him, "Why do you say that? Don't you know if she was, she wouldn't cry? She wouldn't care what you think at all, don't you understand? She's your best friend, you are breaking her heart." He thought about it and then conceded the point. It was stuff like this that caused me the most stress, that made me wish the two would break up friendship and be done with it. But things have to play out to the end, too, no matter what anyone wants.

I told him to go to bed, the next day was a big day. He had a court date where he'd gotten into trouble months previous, and they were expecting he'd be sent to boys school (again). He said, "Naw, I ain't worried about tomorrow." That's all I remember. He talked to Josie some more, and everybody was calm until the next morning at 7:15 am, and Josie was screaming and crying. "Jon's DEAD!" she cried. I told her no, we just talked to him last night. It wasn't possible. But it was. He'd gone drunk driving with Ricky in the passenger seat. Neither of them wore seat belts, but for Jon, it proved detrimental as he flew out of the car when it flipped and was under the hood when the vehicle came down. Ricky lived although he was shaken around in the car like beans in a can.

The next moments, the next days, were very odd for me. The observer in me saw and commented, but the rest of me, the mother, was mortified. A child died. It could have been my child. The phone was quiet; no more Jon drawling, "Is Josie there?" Perfect silence.

Jenna, Jon's sister, was the one who told Josie that Jon died. Josie: "Where is Jon?" Jenna: "He's at the coroner in Princeton." Josie: "The corner? What's he doing down there? Why doesn't someone go get him?" Jenna: "[pause]The coroner, Josie. You can't just go get someone's body from the coroner." Josie: "Why did they leave him on the corner? We need to go get him! Let's go now!" Jenna:"[pause]No, Josie. Coroner. Cor-o-ner. Not corner." Josie: "Oh."

More on Jon later, because his is a long story.

Grown-ups And Desperation

Josie has a job, and she brings in the spare cash that will buy her clothes and pay back everybody she owes (except her parents). She even gave some to church and ten dollars to a neighbor lady down on her luck. So all in all, I'm quite proud of my fourteen year old.

There are some days she brings home only twenty dollars for working five hours. She depends on tips, and the head waitress takes the "good" tables and gives the two teenagers the bad (or non-inhabited) tables. The head waitress brings home over a hundred dollars on those days, and Josie and her friend bring home their scant twenty-something. I said to Josie, "You are friends with the owner, why not say something? This makes me mad!!" She said, "Well, they like her because she's the only one who can work all through the week in the mornings. We have to go to school." I said, "But this isn't right! I was in there this morning, you guys were busting your butts and taking all the food out and getting refills. Where was this other girl? Why is she getting all the money you worked for? Let me talk to the owner for you!"

Josie said, "Never mind, Mom. I made good money the rest of the weekend. Anyhow, I feel sorry for that lady. She has to support her family on tips. Can you imagine, being her age and that's the only kind of job you can get?" I saw her point.

In the end, Josie sees it for what it is. She walks less than a quarter of a mile to work, so no gas or transportation fees. She isn't doing anything else with her time, and she's making mall money. She's saving up for a nice car. She works only weekends, and it's cash. It's profit, and she's not slaving at it like some people have to. And she sees how grown-ups act when they are scratching for a living.

You Just Can't Tell

Today a nice young man helped Josie and I out with the groceries. He was muscular, had a nice clean haircut, and had been joking all along with her about school stuff. Driving out of the parking lot, I commented, "What a nice young man. Maybe you could date him." I only half meant it; I was just drawing attention to his cordial manners.

Josie smiled wanly and shook her head. "He isn't. He's really big into drugs." I was incredulous. "Wow. And you can't even tell it." She replied, "Ya. It's some kind of legal drug, like Loritabs. He has a prescription, and he lies to his mom about taking them. He saves them up and takes them all at once. He offered me one once, I told him no."

"That's horrible," I replied after much thought. "And he looks so nice. He's ruining himself and he doesn't even know it." It really made me think about drugs, and how often my kids might have been offered them.

What It's All About

Well, I chose the Naked Dating Club as a blog title before I knew there really was one. However, it is all about the spirit of the thing. Wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere where the people are genuine and they say what they mean? A lot of a person's day is spent sorting out the truth.

People speak like Shakespeare wrote; there is about three layers. Take, for example, the answer to Susie Somebody's question. Her question is, "Bobby Bonehead, my new boyfriend, wouldn't answer my phone calls last night. And then I heard that Brenda Brrrittzsky, known for her big boobs, was talking to him at the football game last night. Did you see her talking to him??!?!"

And the person she asks is thinking, Gosh. Look at all those question marks and exclamation points. Yeah, I saw Brenda Brrrritzsky talking to Bonehead, but Suzie is a real pain and even though we are in tenth grade I am still hurting from that time she embarrassed me in eighth grade band camp during lunch in front of those hot guys. I don't want to get involved really because this is stupid. So I'll answer like this: "Um. I saw her talk to him for like, two minutes or so. I think she was asking him for directions to Darin's party. But then Bobby hung out with his friends and threw popcorn at the little kids. So, did you get your biology done?"

So now we put the reply through the Shakespeare filter, and this is what we get: "I saw her talk to him for, like, two minutes" really means I only saw two minutes of it, but rumor says he was talking to her for at least half the game. "I think she was asking him for directions to Darin's party" - True Dat. She did ask him directions. But Brenda Brrrittzsky lives on Darin's street. "Bobby hung out with his friends and threw popcorn at the little kids" - well, one little kid, really. It was Bobby's ten-year-old cousin who was annoying Bobby and his friends as they got ready to leave, so he dumped a bag of popcorn over his head.

Okay, so that said, back to the point. The Naked Dating Club is all about being as real as we can get. With our clothes on.

Underwear Party

My son says to me, "Mom, is it okay if I have a bunch of people over on Saturday?" I said, "How many?" He said, "A lot. It's Jacob's party, really, but he wants to hold it over here." I said, "But why does he not hold the party at his house? I don't really want loads of people over here I don't know. And who's going to watch them? I don't want to watch them!" I was exasperated. He said, "Yeah, I know. But Jacob wants to hold an underwear party, and his mom won't put up with that stuff."
"Underwear party?" I said. "What's an underwear party?"
"It's a party where everyone wears only their underwear. And anyhow, it's not like we aren't all friends."
"But... I don't know if I want to hold that at my house. How do I know they won't be doing... stuff? Argh! I can't deal!"
"Mom, it's no big deal. Like, girls wear the same type of clothes at a beach. Swimming suits. And anyhow, we're friends. It'd be just wrong if anyone tried to do something."
"But why does it have to be an underwear party? Why can't it be a regular party, for example?"
"Because - who has ever had an underwear party? That's right, no one."
"Well, hmm. That's an interesting concept. I'll think about it." And I'm still thinking about it.

Teen Life Part 1

My daughter got a job. This is amazing, I thought. For once the giant sucking sound isn't coming from my purse, it's coming from someone else's pocket. Her boss is Greek and cooks really good food. Every night after work he sends her home with two large containers of from-scratch soup. I tell her it must be because he thinks she needs fattening up.

One evening my son came home and said, "Where's Josie?" His friend Jacob was behind him. They are wrestlers. I said, "She's at work. Making money. You know." They started laughing, and kept on laughing, their faces were turning red. He said, "Josie has a job. A JOB?!?" I was like, "Ya. Sure. So why's it so funny to you? 'Cause I know why it's funny to me. She's not siphoning out of my purse anymore." Jacob said, "Because Josie - you gotta know how she is - at lunch, she comes over to the senior's table and all the guys are getting out their wallets, they don't even know why. Dan tried to collect two dollars from her the other day and she just laughed at him." I said, "But what happens to the twenty dollars I give her every two weeks for lunch? What does she do with it?" The boys shook their heads. "Who knows? Wow, Josie has a job..."