O.K., where was I?  Oh yeah, I had just left high-School because some insensitive asshole of a dean didn’t get his willy wet that morning or some shit.

Well, my parents weren’t exactly thrilled about it, but they were both really understanding about how pissed off I was and they were actually on my side.  My mother made some phone calls and later the next day we received a call from the school superintendent with an apology and he said if I went back to school they would excuse the absence and there would be no further punishment for my offense, even the superintendent was not happy about the Deans actions and told me that the Dean should have been more understanding and just waited the extra week and a half or two weeks to suspend me.

Like all teen-agers, I knew everything and figured I would just get my GED later down the road anyway so I decided to not go back to school (I hear the Dean got a real ass-chewing from the superintendent too).  

I had another friend who had quit school as well, and he was working at this day-labor place.  Hey, I was young enough and having my own money sounded nice so I would go to work with my buddy everyday and do stupid labor pools work.  It wasn’t too bad, mostly just cleaning up warehouses and construction sites.  Minimum wage wasn’t too bad.  I was making like $25 a day so I had some spending money.  I was even giving some money to my parents to help pay the bills.

My friend was going to see the world and he wanted to know if I wanted to buy his motorcycle.  Great timing, I had been saving a couple bucks here and there so I took him up on the offer.  Now I had a job, my own transportation and even some money in my pockets.

Well here I am 20 years later, a carpenter with a fucked up back fighting to get my disability.  I wish I could say “I would do all the same again”, but I wouldn’t.  Not for my own sake, but for my kids.

It hasn’t been all bad. There were a few rare times when we actually got to enjoy life for some short periods of time.  But there was way more stress than there should have been.  And it has taken it’s toll.

Our oldest, at seventeen told us what shitty parents we were when he moved out to live with his girlfriend – at least he is going to finish school.  He even found a couple decent job opportunities and found a good path to follow.  I hope he makes it to be a lawyer, I really do.  He was always good at arguing.  I just hope he doesn’t end to be one of those shyster lawyers that works for the wrong people.

Our next oldest the fifteen year old, left us last year.  My wife’s sister came to visit and told him raise as much hell as he could so we would let him go “stay” with her.  Well it worked, that happened right around the time my back had went out again and we were having real money troubles.  So we decided to let him go “stay” with my wife’s sister.

Not to long after he left my wife would try to call and talk to him, but her sister was always in the background running her mouth and telling our boy what to say.  What a bunch of shit that was.  So our fifteen year old gets the life of a spoiled only child.  Not that it’s a bad thing, but my wife’s sister has nothing to do with us anymore now that she has one of our kids.  It’s like she doesn’t give a shit about anybody else in the family.

That really does a lot of good for the other three brothers.  They all hate my wife’s sister and the other brother now, what a great fucking family we have.  The fifteen year old was always really hot-headed though, but it got to the point that he would walk through the house and hit his younger brothers for no reason and then get pissed off at us when we ask him what was he thinking.

Just another perfect example of all the years of poverty kicking our ass.  If I would have done things differently and had more money and less stress we might still be a family.  A real family that actually cares about each other, but I can’t blame it all on myself.  That fucking bitch of a sister-in-law is the bigger part of our own son not so much as even sending his own mother or brothers a fucking birthday card once in a while.  She always looked down at me from day one anyway, like I was less than her – and that was before she had any idea about who I really am as a person.

We really got lucky stumbling into this subsidized housing, otherwise our children would have been taken away and we would be homeless.  But we are still living a really fixed income.

Chalk it up as another year that we pray for the charities to come through for us and hope the kids understand.


Well, if you made it this far and have a buck or two to spare – send it to Joe the broke carpenter via pay-pal – [email protected].

Thanks,
Joe