In With the Worse!

I was sitting in the backyard one day with a friend from the shelter, we were having a smoke and our kids were playing in the yard. Suddenly a little boy came out the back door with a huge grin and introduced himself to our kids. All the kids that were playing outside introduced themselves to the little boy who then came over to my friend and me and introduced himself again. He said that he was going to live there now and that his mom was in the office. So they’d found a family for the empty room.

The first thing I noticed about this kid was that he wasn’t the least bit shy, not even around adults – that could be a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. The second thing I noticed was that he wouldn’t shut up. My friend, L, and I had been in the middle of a conversation when Chatty showed up and we wanted to get back to our conversation. But this child stood there asking us question after question, even when we suggested he go play with the other kids. We actually found it a bit rude that he kept interrupting us and even ruder that he wouldn’t listen when spoken to by an adult. Finally he ran off to join the rest of the kids in the yard and L and I got back to our conversation.

My kids were playing with L’s daughter and a couple of kids of another friend of mine there at the shelter. They were having light saber battles with my boys’ numerous toy light sabers. They invited Chatty to join them and it wasn’t but a few minutes until Chatty started playing too rough and hit one of the boys in the leg with a light saber. The kids told him to play less rough, and when the kids brought the problem to L and me we told him not to play so rough. He agreed but then resumed the rough play. L eventually told him he needed to go back inside with his mom. He didn’t like it and walked angrily back into the house.

I’m telling you this because what we found out later is that Chatty, while he could be a nice kid at times, was exactly like his mother. Kids learn by example and apparently he learned to be rude and ignore instructions from his mother’s behavior. That was her biggest problem, she didn’t listen and didn’t care what trouble it caused for her or anyone around her. See, she had her son, who was about my sons’ ages, and she had two other children, both much younger than her son, and she used her kids as her reason for ignoring rules; plus, she was really proud of the fact that she was rude.

She felt that she needed to behave the way she did to make it clear that she wasn’t going to take any shit from anyone, and she had to be tough because of the way she was raised. Whatever!! Everyone that I’d met in the shelter had a bad background but it didn’t mean that we got to behave so rudely to other people. This chick, though, I’ll call her Cathy, didn’t hesitate to make it clear that she wasn’t going to follow rules, and that nobody there at PRD was going to tell her what to do or when.

That wasn’t her only flaw, either. She was extremely two-faced. She’d say something to your face with a smile and then turn around and talk about you to someone else, making you out to be the bad guy. It happened a lot and caused some severe tension around that house. Staff shrugged it off and considered it a clash of personalities amongst the residents. Little did they know, but eventually everything boiled over like an erupting volcano.

I’m not going to go into details just yet; I simply wanted to introduce you to Cathy because there is a lot more to say about her. For now I’ll just let you use your imagination and see if what I tell you later matches what you thought it would be. It’s pretty interesting and I’m sure you’ve all dealt with people like Cathy before; but I’m guessing the ending you had with your Cathy was not like the ending we had with ours.

Until next time…peace to all.