My Son John

This is for the moms and dads and other parenting figures who are going through the terrible teen years... I've been writing a friend here on daily strength who has a teenage son who's doing his best to drive her bonkers... Anyway what follows are a couple of letters I've written her... maybe it will help you. I sure hope so... parenting teens is hard work... In response to my friend's hoping her son would grow out of it: My son did... I had one of his teachers from Jr High tell me once that John was one of the worst students he ever had to deal with... that hurt... but he tells me after John had graduated from high school and was working for the sheriff's office... (he understood the criminal element maybe... *Smile*) truly if the teacher had told me at the time that John was giving him trouble we would have tried to do something... John could be a real pain but I have to confess sometimes I found his "badness* very interesting... For instance he told me one day, You know mom what I like to do is when a teacher throws a question out there I like to give a totally unconnected answer and watch her squirm... you know teachers don't want to make you feel bad... afraid they'll damage your precious psyche... so they'll hem and haw and finally come up with something like... well no that wasn't exactly what I was going for... but I'm glad to see that you're thinking..." They weren't about to ask him how he felt his answer connected... (If any of his teachers read this they may put out a contract on me...) John is and always was a wonderfully interesting person... I taught for a while and I found children often interesting even in their misbehavior... they are so creative... so hopefully 14 gonna be a wheel someday isn't doing anything dangerous... and they do sometimes... and you can all remember once upon a time when my name was Harriet and I was married to a man named Ozzie... I am trying very hard to make you smile... I remember my dad bought me a sign that said I don't need drugs I'm raising teenagers... guess he figured that anyone raising teenagers was in as altered a state of consciousness as you can get... what John's doing now... John only worked for the sheriff's office a couple of years although he remained a volunteer for several years after leaving the sheriff's office... After his dad went through a major health crisis in 1998 he decided to quit the sheriff's office... he had a rough intro at the sheriff's office... he started in June and in Novemeber after 3 months of officer training he became a road cop... he was 1 of only 2 selected from his class... anyway 10 days after being on the road he was sent to the scene of an accident. A girl he had graduated with just a few months before in May had died... her injuries were terrible... He came home that night so so sad... He was ready to quit then... The girl's father had come to the scene of the accident... John was assigned the task of keeping him from getting too close... The girl's father kept asking John was she dead... John could not tell the man yes although because she had been nearly decapitated he knew she was... still it had to be officially pronounced by the coroner... all he could do he said was rub the man's back and say I'm sorry over and over... I told John that if that ever happened to my child I'd be grateful if I had someone who wasn't jaded by too many years of seeing too many awful things beside me and that as hard as it had been on him I had to be glad for that girl and her father that John was there... By the way... when Cara died... I got the jaded cop... A few days after that John was at the scene of a multiple murder involving a drug deal that had gone bad... John and his partner were first on the scene when they caught up with the guys who did the shooting... It might seem thrilling but most of all its frightening... cops are humans first... John said not taking justice into his own hands was terribly hard... after 2 years he said he didn't want to spend the rest of his working life seeing the worst that life had to offer... He went to work at Sears for about a year and then he went to work for Oceaneering... Oceaneering is an offshore company working with ROV or Remote Operated Vehicles... underwater robots... pretty neat... so at 29 he's in a position of responsibility... married, a father of 2 and an all around good kid... he's too tall for me to tousle his hair... besides he'd probably kill me... He's not perfect but for Christmas I'm letting him slide... *Smile*