February 26, 2013
Prayers go out to the family of my boss. His nephew was shot in a drug deal gone bad Sunday night and he died Monday. He was 17. Good kid, bad decisions, was how the situation was texted to me.
I used the opportunity to sit down with CJ and discuss peer pressure and the stuff out there in the world that is messed up. Fortunately, the basis of information he has from me is that the reason to either do drugs or drink alcohol is to change what your personality normally is. If you are at a gathering and want to open up some, it can do that. If you are overstressed and want to calm down, it can do that. However, taking either of these scenarios too far has consequences. I am sure plenty of you have seen or been the excessive result, as have I. I have never done drugs, but I drank plenty in college. I was the guy overly depressed about those bad relationships gone wrong on Dallas. I was the guy who friends would tell the next day, "you were so funny last night!" "Was I funny ha ha, or funny peculiar? Wait, I don't want to know."
I made questionable morality decisions and had a brush with the law. I drove when I should not have. Excessive alcohol changed who I was and did not make me a better person than I was sober. While I haven't shared all of my mistakes with CJ, I think he got the idea that changing your personality by using a substance and dealing with the consequences of the extremes it may cause, or the loss of your brain's filter, is not something he should be dealing with. So far, so good. He likes his personality the way it is.
Please have that talk with your child if you have not. And think of the example you may be setting. The result may be that you do not have to experience the loss of your honor-student teen-age son since he and his friends decided they needed to buy some pot.
In hopefully lighter news, I would submit to you a question. Here is the background.
I was helping a young man who had a tattoo on his hand. It spanned the knuckles on the top of his fingers and was the letters T I M E. Why, do you think, he had this tattooed on his hand? What reminder was it serving him? (Since he was having trouble remembering the PIN for his debit card, I had hoped he had that tattooed on his other hand, but he did not.)
Here are three submissions thus far.
1. I say, he has time on his hands and is just being witty.
2. A friend says he served time and is using his tattoo as his legal compass reminder that he does not want to go back.
3. CJ says he wants the person he just punched to know that he got clocked.
What do you think?
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Prayers for the family of your boss as losing a child is shattering. You are a wise parent to use this as an opportunity to open a discussion with your son.
ReplyDeleteAs for TIME, I'm going with #1. I like witty.
I just wanted to add something since I keep rereading this to see if I actually made my point.
ReplyDeletePlease add on to your discussion with your child about drugs and alcohol that when you are an inexperienced drinker, one beer or joint can be too much. Help make them see that who they are is enough, they do not need to try to change their personality at all.
Man, being a parent is tricky.
As the parent of a recovering addict I can tell you that the discussion you are recommending can not happen soon enough or often enough. By the grace of God and the strength of will my child has found (and keeps finding daily) he is still here. I have attended way too many funerals of his contemporaries that just never understood how unnecessary it all is.
ReplyDeleteI am truly sorry for the loss in your boss' family. I hope they will find a support group like Al-anon to help them through their grieving.