EXCERPT: "Thank you Miss Evridge" from Nick. i finally read it.

looking at photos of n's baby, who is 18 months now.  i am one of n's "Ms Evridge" (if you go into the book Chicken Soup for the christian soul, page 189, there is a short story called thank you, miss evridge.  n had wanted me to read that a long time ago and his whacko mother was hoping it would be something rotten.  she does this with people.  its not.  its lovely.
i don't like people telling me what to read if i actually know them.  so i didn't even READ it until now.  plus, in between his mother would get in the way as much as possible.  its easier not to bother when someone like that is surrounding the person who is trying to communicate with you.  hate to say it but its true, though you are enabling the whacko if you stay away and i know that.  more so now, thanks to ds, than before.  
the intro for that story says, 
"perhaps you've seen her.  she may be a member of your church, a soloist in your choir.  it's possible she's on the mission field.  for ten years, she had a profound influence on my life.  then she vanished.  if you know her, tell her i said thanks.  thanks.  that word seems inadequate for someone who contributed so much to molding my character and shaping my future.")  i only knew n for less than a year though. 
i had no idea at all what n meant when he told me about that story.  i still had no idea what he meant when they tracked me down through an ex-boyfriend because n was getting married.  
n's mother was a housemate of mine during my "ivy league" college days.  i've gone to more than one college.  and more than one private school and all that.  n's mother was a piece of work.  still is.  she's a nurse.  she see's a therapist.  she's on meds.  she doesn't let you know this.  instead she causes utter chaos in all the lives she runs into, her son's included and n is her son.  she tries to NOT do this with n, she claims.   she's narcisstic so spends a LOT of time stating she knows things "for a fact" that she knows nothing about, and simply made up ("its part of her disorder").   
its easiest to ignore a situation like that.  especially, if you are in college.  its easiest to just switch houses when the semester is up.  which i did.  but i also stayed the summer since i'm busy all summer anyway and it wouldn't kill me to do that.  her adivce to her son about schools (colleges) was wrong.  she was not from the same school as the rest of us.  she lied about that in her ad.  she isn't from a good school (highly rated school) at all.   she was doing absolutely NOTHING to get n ready for his sat's and telling him literally, that he didn't need to get ready.  he would just ace everything magically.  omg!  she was telling him county college is the equivalent of any university out there.  stuff like that. 
she screwed with his "former" step sisters as well, and he ended up asking me to speak to them as well.  i used to be on student government in college, and talked to total strangers all the time and fixed their schedules.  it wouldn't kill me to take an extra step.  with n, i didn't have to interfere, i could have played it safer for me and stayed out of it.  in fact, i could have lost my housing mid-semester by speaking up to his mother, and helping him have something better. 
i was totally HORRIFIED that n wasn't signed up for princeton review to get him ready for sat's, or at least a school equivalent.  i was HORRIFIED that he didn't know there are manuals that teach you how to study and study tricks.  he went from being a b/c student to a b/a student while i was there.  i told him how to negotiate with teachers, fill out grade change forms FOR the teacher (my stepmother is a teacher, they don't have the TIME for that, you have to fill it out FOR them and then have them sign it.  you don't burden them with MORE paperwork) and about the book called "Acing College"  A Professor Tells Students How to Beat the System [Joshua Halberstam].  i bothered to jam with n and his music teacher when he was having troubles with that.  i can go on and on.  i didn't spend a LOT of time with n.  just handed him the tricks of getting by in an EASIER way, than beating his head against a brick wall and waiting it to smash which was his mother's recommendation.  wth?   then i discovered his father is a gambler, (so was one of my grandmothers) so there was an exchange there, as n understood those things and i really didn't.  probably still don't.
i don't go to therapists.  i believe in work as a cure-all.  i'm one of those.  if getting one job doesn't keep you occupied, then get two jobs.  they claim i'm a dying breed.  but i am as i am.  i'm not an emt or fire rescue and couldn't be.  i get too drained being around too much drama.  i don't like being overly personal, but will answer any question as long as its put to me in a non-personal way.  i don't like knowing too much personal stuff, i keep my social life pretty superficial and if it gets too personal i back off a lot.  i'm one of those.  but i do stick my neck out and discovered since being on ds, that that is actually a sign of child abuse.  believing one's life doesn't matter too much so why not take the risk.  could be how that started.  who knows.  but i can't just sit there.  it drives me crazy to just sit there and do nothing.  
hearing from n is always nice, but always a surprise as well.   i could never see him all the time because i know the truth of what goes on there.  he keeps his distance from his mother most of the time himself.  i think she really screwed with his head for several years and the stability he has is from his stepmother since his teens and from his maternal grandmother from infancy to about age nine he lived there while his mother was in school as an undergrad (and who his mother doesn't like him to visit, she threatens everyone when he visits his grandmother).  no idea why his mother is such a head case, when her extended family is normal.  anytime she locates me or calls i'm horrified.  with n, i'm better about it.  
i sent him a card and a check when he married.  a NORMAL amount.  everyone gets nuts on that with my own family, just send a card kind of thing.  no one trusts anyone if any money changes hands, i have SEVERAL step cousins who are always looking for large hand-outs for their kids.  its disgusting.  the older i get, the more i understand that part of life.  ten years ago, i don't think i did though.   
its still raining.  felt good to write this.  wish it would warm up out there.