30.7.07

Skills @ home

another week another Monday off. Its good being King.
We joined a Softball league today so i wont have to go outside and bat stones into the Sound anymore. Wow.
Last week they snagged a gray whale in Muckleshoot nets at 3:30am in Elliot Bay! Im talking right outside the Edgewater Hotel.
Damn who knew they came in so close anyways. Gray Whales, I mean.
We went and saw (friday)my latest obsession: Local boys Blue Scholars at the Cap Hill Block Party, which was nuts as all out....who lets these kids out the cage anyways? If I had a baby girl and I chanced upon her on the streets, dressed like these ho-wannabe girlies....I might freak out. I dont get why these babies are putting out all this sex when they dont even know what they are doing! Its crazy, wheres the folks? Wheres the suppport at home, who is telling these girls its ok to put it out there like that? I cringe mentally when I think about my kids....how am I telling my son whats real and whats not, and my daughters....what about them? If this is how it is now, what will it be in ten? Its gonna be rough.
All you know how things are with my folks, but heres the real deal: they gave me something big, bigger than anything they knew, so big that sometimes i feel the chosen son. I have the blueprint. I have the keys to the door. The maps are mine. Id bet a years wages when I was born my folks had big ideas, I mean, who wouldnt right? Every parent does the best they can with WHAT THEY HAVE. No job is complete without the right tools to do it, so if you havent been given the tools, you cant build the right thing. Your skills as a parent begin as a child. You live what you have been taught, just like you are what you eat. If you came up in a bad cycle then unless you breakout....your a repeat offender without even knowing it.
My lessons in life have been hard and fast, mostly with little mercy, yet the backdrop to all that is a soft childhood with massive amounts of ultra conservative cradling, and protection. As a young boy even the boy scouts were off limits to me. I was protected from the world, kept safe from the harsh winds of reality, so when I left home before my time, I SHOULD HAVE NOT SURVIVED. Yet I did, I beat the odds with every ounce of Gods grace anyone could have ever had. I was working my life my way, hell or high water. I wanted everything I felt I never had and I wasnt about to wait for tomorrow to get it. I had a good education as a kid, but the streets almost got me, I wasnt even close to ready. None of us who were there that day will ever forget as I took the bag outta mums hands as a late 17 yo kid who didnt know his ass from his elbow but was too proud to back down...just like his folks. She packed that little bag and gave me a choice: straighten up or hit the bricks. I hit bricks.....I walked down the stairs in a daze, somehow knowing I was in for hell, but somehow it fit in, I knew it was the only way, cuz the way things had been. I walked out the house and on the porch my dad sat...in the swing...too far away to see his eyes or notice any tears of regret...but he said nothing as I stumbled down those steps, pack in hand. The deal was for whatever reason, out of his hands. He had given up, unwilling to fight anymore. Funny....one of the things he always used to say to me as a scared little kid on my paper route "dont worry son, its always darkest before dawn". I say that all the time to this day, and its really about situations in life, like then, just when it was at its worst, all hell had broken loose, there was still hope. There always is hope. Hope remains.
I dont know what the reasons are anymore for all that drama, its been so many years.
Our family was shattered even from before that time though. Smashed up.
The lessson for me is simple: you could have a kid on the streets, needle in his arm, AIDS in his blood...ANYTHING...and you still give him love. Feed him, listen to him, be his friend, be his authority, his support. Dont turn your back on your kids. Your parenting begins as a child. Maybe what you get is what you give. Respect support and accountabilty is what matters. You give your kid the right tools for the job, you give your kid support, and open door no matter what, in todays day and age you cant afford not to..then maybe you got a shot at a kid full of enough self respect to not go about like a ho or a thug.
I know one thing for sure: my kids gonna be a boy scout.
thats it.

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