Thursday, April 22, 2004
Wreath Record. Late March was the record hold-out-date for discarding Christmas wreaths. I thought. But this year a new, New England record was set. On someone's trash bin today I saw a brown-and-withered evergreen wreath and a ditto-Christmas kissing ball. I guess the only thing that surprised me was that the red and metallic gold ribbons hadn't been carefully removed to perhaps use on next year's holiday greens.
Why Not Take a Day Off and spend it at the XXX Juvenile District Court with the honor-student daughter who was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time i.e. a Friday-afternoon bust at a house filled with sixty-seven new-and-used blue plastic cups ready to receive humungous quantities of expensive beer on the premises? So many kids were charged that the court had to stagger the summons to accommodate a sustainable number of kids at one time. The day the daughter and I went she was cast together with seven suit-and-tied boys. My daughter whispered to my ear: "This doesn't look good. I look like the drunken slut in a gang bang." I looked adoringly at daughter. Hmmm. You're kind of right I thought.
The daughter was taken in first. "You're the only one who didn't smirk when we were talking to you," said the juvenile justice coordinator. "You can fight this in court if you think you are innocent or you can choose diversion. In the first instance this will be on your record FOREVER -- even if you are found innocent. In the second instance, you can choose 20 hours of community service plus 8 hours of counseling and this will keep your record unblemished. Soooo..... What would you like to do?"
The town, that heard the case, of the gaggle-of-kids, caught, in the affluent community, at 4 p.m., in the afternoon, guzzling expensive beers…. border-line hates the town in which these kids were nabbed. "I'm sure you all have bright futures at prestigious colleges, don't you?" Translation: choose diversion because this nets XXX city that hates you thousands of dollars of federally-matched funds and we relish the thought of you driving your SUV/Jetta/X-brand car to skid-row counseling center to sit around with sketchy heroine addicts talking about drug addiction.
The thing is that I am thrilled. I could have throttled all seven of those kids sitting in the magistrate’s office waiting to be heard today. Their personas radiated a: isn't-this-all-just funny attitude that might have been funny save for the fact that they have lost four friends in the course of two years because of stupid, stupid alcohol/drug related incidents.
You won't believe this but the daughter was totally innocent in this particular episode. She had stopped by to pick up her boyfriend after having completed voluntary community service. At the same time the cops pulled up. She was not in the house but was asked to stand in the garden while the police took names. Bottom line, however, is that she would have been inside the house full of alcohol and no adult supervision had the police arrived five minutes later. Which is why the only support she got from mom was to accompany her to said sketchy courthouse in town XXX. I was pleased to see her visibly shaking as her name was read. Authoritarian fathers do wonders to instill a healthy fear of authoritarian figures. Having said that, I secretely hope that she will one day learn to stand up to them. Authoritarian does not always make them right...
One of the aforementioned kids waiting on the bench can only be described as a 'townie.' His tattooed father nearly punched out the officer who read the report and the tank-topped son scowled when he heard he would not be able to participate in the 'diversion' program due to a prior conviction. Instead he was 'sentenced' to twice-a-week AA meetings. "How the f*** am I going to do all the meetings they want me to do? I'm going to Paris Island end of May." Which prompted one of the non-townie-affluent-moms-of-our-community to say, "Oh, are you and your family going on vacation? Where is Paris Island?"
The embarrassed Jewish son of said mother -- the one who kept insisting the reason he wasn't going to be seen until last was because he was Jewish, said, "Mommmm, Paris Island is Marines....Colorado." And then Iraq ,I thought.
Thank god I didn't open my mouth. I had no idea and had been myself wondering why I had never heard of this Paris Island vacation resort....
Why Not Take a Day Off and spend it at the XXX Juvenile District Court with the honor-student daughter who was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time i.e. a Friday-afternoon bust at a house filled with sixty-seven new-and-used blue plastic cups ready to receive humungous quantities of expensive beer on the premises? So many kids were charged that the court had to stagger the summons to accommodate a sustainable number of kids at one time. The day the daughter and I went she was cast together with seven suit-and-tied boys. My daughter whispered to my ear: "This doesn't look good. I look like the drunken slut in a gang bang." I looked adoringly at daughter. Hmmm. You're kind of right I thought.
The daughter was taken in first. "You're the only one who didn't smirk when we were talking to you," said the juvenile justice coordinator. "You can fight this in court if you think you are innocent or you can choose diversion. In the first instance this will be on your record FOREVER -- even if you are found innocent. In the second instance, you can choose 20 hours of community service plus 8 hours of counseling and this will keep your record unblemished. Soooo..... What would you like to do?"
The town, that heard the case, of the gaggle-of-kids, caught, in the affluent community, at 4 p.m., in the afternoon, guzzling expensive beers…. border-line hates the town in which these kids were nabbed. "I'm sure you all have bright futures at prestigious colleges, don't you?" Translation: choose diversion because this nets XXX city that hates you thousands of dollars of federally-matched funds and we relish the thought of you driving your SUV/Jetta/X-brand car to skid-row counseling center to sit around with sketchy heroine addicts talking about drug addiction.
The thing is that I am thrilled. I could have throttled all seven of those kids sitting in the magistrate’s office waiting to be heard today. Their personas radiated a: isn't-this-all-just funny attitude that might have been funny save for the fact that they have lost four friends in the course of two years because of stupid, stupid alcohol/drug related incidents.
You won't believe this but the daughter was totally innocent in this particular episode. She had stopped by to pick up her boyfriend after having completed voluntary community service. At the same time the cops pulled up. She was not in the house but was asked to stand in the garden while the police took names. Bottom line, however, is that she would have been inside the house full of alcohol and no adult supervision had the police arrived five minutes later. Which is why the only support she got from mom was to accompany her to said sketchy courthouse in town XXX. I was pleased to see her visibly shaking as her name was read. Authoritarian fathers do wonders to instill a healthy fear of authoritarian figures. Having said that, I secretely hope that she will one day learn to stand up to them. Authoritarian does not always make them right...
One of the aforementioned kids waiting on the bench can only be described as a 'townie.' His tattooed father nearly punched out the officer who read the report and the tank-topped son scowled when he heard he would not be able to participate in the 'diversion' program due to a prior conviction. Instead he was 'sentenced' to twice-a-week AA meetings. "How the f*** am I going to do all the meetings they want me to do? I'm going to Paris Island end of May." Which prompted one of the non-townie-affluent-moms-of-our-community to say, "Oh, are you and your family going on vacation? Where is Paris Island?"
The embarrassed Jewish son of said mother -- the one who kept insisting the reason he wasn't going to be seen until last was because he was Jewish, said, "Mommmm, Paris Island is Marines....Colorado." And then Iraq ,I thought.
Thank god I didn't open my mouth. I had no idea and had been myself wondering why I had never heard of this Paris Island vacation resort....
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