Hi Everyone,
In Saturday’s blog called, Legal Aid—The FLIC Office, I mentioned that while I am at the FLIC office, I have met some train wrecks. This is what I meant. (Here’s the link, http://arebelsrant.com/legal-aid-the-flic-office/
The best, or worse, depending on how you want to look at this, is when one woman was there with her 21 year-old son as he was trying to get access to his child that he found out about on FaceBook. If you thought it gets better you’d be right!
This woman and her son explained everything to me and anyone else would (un)willingly listen not only what they were doing, going through, how they found out about her grandson, his son, but also ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about the mother of this child and what a rotten, screwed up person she is and has been for years. They just went on and on and they didn’t use screwed up, they used fucked up. So every time you read screwed up, just replace it with the above. Anyway, I guess when they thought no one was paying attention to them they just repeated the story with a few embellishments as the day went on.
What I found interesting about the mother and the son team is that as they were trying to create a negative image of the mother they failed to recognize that some people in the waiting room, like me, weren’t stupid! My thoughts were, “Hmmmm. If the woman is SO SCREWED UP, what was this guy doing having sex with her in the first, second and third place! Maybe it was an easy lay. I don’t know. IF this woman is such a train wreck, and you, (the mother) helped her before then why are you trashing her now? Better yet, why didn’t you tell your son to at the very least wear a condom if he was going to have sex with her, the apparently screwed up woman? Just because the mother feeds her children “junk food” doesn’t make her a bad mother. It just means that she doesn’t know better and/or can’t always afford better food. A pile of dirty diapers, to me means that she was having one or more bad days and maybe had better things to do. Not putting diapers in the garbage doesn’t mean she is a bad mother. Some really BAD mothers have the cleanest houses. Maybe you’re one of those BAD mothers.” So why were trying to paint a negative image of this mother? The answer is simple.
You see, the son is a train wreck! He is 21 and has been incarcerated twice for things I can’t remember, had a slew of speeding tickets, BUT had a good enough lawyer to keep him out of jail the other times he had trouble with the law! As we all (should) know when people want to make themselves look good, they MUST make others look bad. The second part to that is when people try to get you to agree with them, as the mother and son team did with me and anyone who would (un)willingly listen.
“Do you see what I mean? She’s screwed up right?” asked the mother enthusiastically of me and everyone else. Most of the other people agreed, I pretended to read. When the mother and her son wouldn’t SHUT UP, I finally out of sheer emotional exhaustion looked up. When the mother wasn’t repeating the WHOLE story her son was. The mother CONSTANTLY asked me if I knew what she meant and if the mother of her grandson was screwed up as she kept asking. This went on all day. Honestly, I think I SUFFERED more in those few hours than I had all week! I also didn’t get into see the legal aid lawyer by the way.
The next day, I went back to the FLIC office and guess whose shining, smiling faces I saw? If you guessed the mother and son team you’d be right! There they were, happy to see me as I silently groaned inside. I just signed in and they were ahead of me so I had that going for me.
I did my usual of bathroom, get coffee, sit in coffee shop and read. The SECOND I sat in the waiting room, the mother forced a letter into my hand that I reluctantly read. Yes, these are the things that people, like myself, are subjected to, in order to keep the peace in the waiting room as the minutes feel LIKE HOURS!!! Then after I finished reading the letter, the mother started with her usual, “What do you think? She’s screwed up right?” Now another thing that people, like me, have to do to keep the peace in the waiting room, is either comment or agree with some of the points. I decided to give no more than two brief comments.
I couldn’t stay in the waiting room because they drove me NUTS, the coffee shop was too noisy, and there was a cold breeze in the smoking area. Because I felt discombobulated, I totally forgot about the semi-silence of the hallway. I tried to stay away from them as much as possible, but I admit I wasn’t always successful. There were two of them and one of me and they seemed to be everywhere I was! I thought I was GOING TO LOSE MY MIND!!!
The mother tried to get me outside to have a cigarette with her, but I shut that one down. THERE was NO WAY, I was going to stand outside and suffer through a private conversation and then have her say God knows what as we had to get back into the courthouse by going through security! The seconds continued to feel like minutes and the minutes continued to feel like hours. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse it did!
Since I was paying them as little attention as humanly possible, something happened that had the mother ask her son if he had an assault charge. Neither of them could remember so they decided to go to the police station to check his criminal record after they spoke to someone at the FLIC office. I thought, “Perfect! Not only does he have a criminal record, not one of you can remember EXACTLY how many charges he has or for what!”
I think the mother had the bright idea of calling Legal Aid lawyers, because her son qualifies it, from the list while still in the waiting room so that kept them busy for a while. Both the mother and the son were euphoric when they found a Legal Aid lawyer who did family and criminal law. I left! At that point, I didn’t care if I saw a Legal Aid lawyer or not. My main priority was to retain whatever level of sanity I had remaining which, at that point wasn’t a lot! I am serious.
So if anyone is wondering how to spot a train wreck, keep reading. First you have to recognize that train wrecks will GLOSS OVER ANY and ALL NEGATIVE things that they currently do or have done in their lives, BUT will AMPLIFY, if not fabricate, one or more negatives that someone else does or did. They MUST do this! If they don’t they’ll risk losing you agreeing with them and that is EXACTLY what they want! That is also why they will REPEATEDLY ASK you things in a manner as a way to get you to agree with them. If you, or I, pay attention, by listening, watching and waiting for them to reveal themselves, you, or I, will discover that they are TRAIN WRECKS, and are most likely raising TRAIN WRECKS TOO!!!
That’s all I did. I just sat there and paid attention and little by little the mother and son team told everyone that the son had a criminal record, was in jail twice, and couldn’t remember what he was charged with and when. I just read between the lines of their lives. My thoughts on this are that the mother probably focused on the cleanliness of her home, when she really, in my opinion, she should have been focusing on the fact that her son needed guidance, discipline and a few lessons in accountability!
Tomorrow’s blog is called, The Unvarnished Truth and I am going to tell everyone right now, few are going to like it, so there’s your head’s up!
Thank you for reading, A. Rebel’s Rant! ;D
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