The lounge was born roughly seventeen and one half years ago due to the fact Gulfboot Johnson got tired of me writing emails to him that were really more stores than emails... Gulf informed me that there were these things called "blogs" and that he'd set one up for me seeing as i'm a technological Luddite and so he got to work and the lounge was born... the masthead and layout have never changed due to my being said idiot when it comes to the tech thing and i'd like to think the writing has improved over the years (but as we all know that's subjective) but the strange thing is this... the I-mac was about six months old when it started and Disaster but a dream... in the next few days (probably before this gets published) the I-mac will head off to university to hopefully make it through his first semester... fucking weird to think about for his old man as i remember that baby boy, both the I-mac and his fledgling father, and thinking back at all that's happened since then sorta blows the old mind...
Lately i've been watching how things have gone around the old homestead, i know the I-mac probably isn't the most prepared kid to go off to school, luckily it's only about an ninety minutes away, he scraped through his last year of high school, would have failed and not graduated if not for his mother doing a fair amount of his work, has shown a distinct lack of responsibility in any area of his life, and frankly he worries his old man... not that there's much i can do about it, as is the mantra he's heard, it's your life kid and you gotta live it and take accountability for it... that said i know the kid is afraid to grow up, he's said as much but as i've told him, doesn't matter, shit is gonna happen whether you want it to or not... now his girlfriend is leaving to go across the country to school and he's going to a state school here in Pennsyltucky... granted his GF is a bit of a princess from a wealthy family and the truth is i'm not exactly a big fan of her or her family but that's a whole other kettle of fish (as the saying goes)... but mainly what i've been doing is watching the other people in the household to make sure they are okay cuz what's about to happen is going to be a change for all of us...
It's been a contentious couple years with the I-mac and it's had a effect on all of us, not the least his little brother... i'd always hoped they'd be close and watching them drift apart for the last couple years had been tough, of course part of the problem was the amount of time and energy the I-mac took up with his antics, yes he has ADHD but not all of it can be attributed to that, some was being a teenage shithead, something we've all been and combined with the ADHD made the place a nightmare sometimes, especially when the I-mac and i were getting into it not to mention the fact the BW spent immense amounts of time working and helping the I-mac and i'd often remind her that we had two boyos and that one seemed to just float along under the radar cuz he could, mainly cuz he didn't cause much trouble and did what he needed to do even if sometimes that was just skating by... even at the beginning of the summer the boyos weren't that close, something that actually did bother the I-mac, but as the summer progressed things began to change..
Sometimes siblings are just at different ages with different interests but even this past year there was a distinct distance between the two but as summer wound down they began to hang out more, granted part of that was the I-mac spent too much time with his girlfriend and thus alienated a lot of his friends and at times didn't really have anyone to hang with so he'd drive his little brother and his friends around... it was a bit strange and at one point i even compared the I-mac to David Wooderson (see the film Dazed and Confused) but in one respect i saw my two sons actually hanging out and having a good time, bonding, as they therapists say, and though i told the I-mac he better not be hooking his brother up with certain things (to which i had my suspicions) he swore that he wouldn't (though i also know how he felt about being the cool big brother and recognized there was a bit of bullshit in that statement), but i've been around long enough to know how shit works and seeing as the days were winding down to the I-mac's departure i let it slide.. even better, the night before the I-mac left he and his brother were out and Disaster (this was relayed by the I-mac) looked over at his big brother and said, "i love you bro", i laughed out loud when i heard this cuz Disaster plays it pretty close to the vest and hearing this warmed his old man's cold heart, the I-mac stated even he was taken aback and somewhat apologized for being a bit of dick to him over the past couple years and not hanging out and talking to him more... but from their old man's perspective it was good to know things were now going in the right direction..
Which of course brings us to the BW and her state of mind as her first born baby boy was about to head off to college... the BW was a bit more emotional about things than i was, she had spent the last dozen years worrying and fretting about her boy, she saw early on the signs of ADHD, had worked with him endlessly and sometimes did way too much for him, call it a mother's love but i often mentioned that if he didn't start doing shit on his own he'd never learn how to do it, i added that failure is one of the greatest teachers of all, call it a father's love, we butted heads about it but her rationalization, particularly over the last year, was that she needed him to graduate and go off to school cuz she needed a break... granted the boy has been at Uni a few days and has called his mama repeatedly... funny he hasn't called me once... then again i was always the one who told him to do shit himself and that i wasn't helping him by doing it for him, granted the more the boy and i clashed the less i did for him as i explained that if one doesn't appreciate shit and proceeds to act like a shit then one finds people stop doing them any favors... but the BW has had her moments when the tears begin and she worries about her baby boy... and with good reason, see above line about all the times he's called asking where to find things on the school's app or in his room, she's still his personal assistant though we both know the calls will decrease as time goes by, that's just how it is...
As for his old man? well let's just say it was probably best the boyo went to school... it's been a bit of a strained relationship with the oldest boyo the last few years, i understand it's the teenage years of pushing boundaries and testing limits but the biggest difference is what i call the respect factor... yes i did the same shit when i was a kid but i also had massive respect for my father, for my mother as well, but i also knew what my dad (and mom) did for me and and appreciated what they had done... the eldest boyo often showed a distinct lack of appreciation and respect at times that was both infuriating and insulting, the way he spoke to his mother, the things he called her, the same things he'd try to say to me but quickly learned his old man was a bit different, shit didn't have the effect on me, in fact i did my best to hold my acid tongue but now and then when he really pissed me off it took roughly one sentence to settle the matter, not something i'm particularly proud of but it's the gift/curse i've been given... i've made my fair share of mistakes with the kid and have told him as much but i've also explained that i've tried to do my best even when i didn't get it right, granted i'll miss the boyo but i also know it's time, time to leave the nest and get off on his own under the somewhat controlled environment of school, how he fares is a whole other question but it wasn't going to be healthy for anyone if he hung around here..
So now we watch and wait... we wait to see if the kid takes responsibility and does what he needs to do, the I-mac has grandiose ideas, big plans to make big money, problem is in order to get to that point one has to put in a lot of hard work, a lot of time and yes there will be setbacks, sometimes failure, but the question is how do you rebound from that, does he put in the work to make the setbacks minor bumps instead of major obstacles? the biggest problem is his tendency to want to jump from A to Z without all the steps in between... i'm pulling for the kid, i'm sure there were lots of doubt when i got on that plane so many moons ago and headed some 2000 miles away to school, i managed and grew and came home a different person, i'm hoping the same happens to the boyo, i'm hoping he succeeds and accomplishes whatever it is he sets out to do... i'm worried about the boy... but i'm pulling for him... and at this point that's all his old man can do.
2 comments:
Best of luck to you both (I mean I-mac and yourself). I was pretty worried when mine left for uni. I didn't know how they'd cope with it (and the problem was, in my youngest's case, my worries were well-founded). Fingers crossed.
Oh, and congrats for 17 years! (Must work out how old loobynet is -- although I lost years of pieces when I couldn't afford to renew it one year).
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