Round 3

She sat in front of me, silent and clutching the crumpled piece of paper that I had given her the last time we talked. She had that look that a student does when they walk into the office to talk about their latest poor grade on a project.

“Why did you bring that back today” I asked her?

“I wanted to know if this was all the truth” she responded “or if you were trying to scare me.”

“Both” I said, “Are you scared yet?”

“I was scared when this first happened and it’s not getting any better. Especially with you. Steve told me that you were a nice person and he lied to me, you’re not good at all! Some friend you are!”

“Well that’s all true” I said, “as a researcher I wouldn’t lie to you, I just thought you should know the facts and we could go from there. Researchers always want to know the facts before jumping off a cliff. And as for me being a nice person, don’t think that I’m going to roll over for you and help you out of the goodness of my heart.”

She held up the crumpled piece of paper and told me that what was written there wasn’t her, that she was going to overcome the adversity and succeed, but she wasn’t certain how.

“So how involved is the father of the child in all this…because it seems to me that you’re sitting here with an admitted jackass of a stranger and shouldn’t he be here to protect you from reality and or me?”

“The fact is that you’re alone in all this and the fact that he hasn’t shown his face is telling…you do know who the father is don’t you?”

“Hell yeah I know who it is you bastard” she yelled back, “Are calling me a slut?”

“Then where is he?”

“Where is this father of your child?”

“Is he going to support you and the baby or is he going to disappear into the shadows like all the rest of the teenage fathers out there? Hell, you probably wouldn’t even sue him for child support if you had the chance…since you ‘love him” and all. Where is this Romeo anyway?”

“He’s going to support us” she shot back.

“Yeah, right. And you’re here facing me by yourself without mister wonderful. Next time why don’t you bring the little prick with you so we can all sit down and talk about this and then we’ll all know just how committed he is to this whole program.”

The tears welled up in her eyes and then suddenly something unexpected spewed forth from her…

“Your son said you were hard.”

“Really…” I said, “And you’ve met my son?”

I thought back about my son had been, and when and then realized that they might have met at the Saturday nights that Steve opens up the church to the neighborhood kids. My son sometimes goes there to hang out with his friends in the International Baccalaureate program because it’s a safe place to be on a Saturday and his friends are more into where they are going to escape to college rather than where they are going to score their next joint.

“So what did Colin have to say about me?”

She paused and I could see that she was choosing her words at that point.

“He said that you were a good guy…but that you didn’t ‘suffer idiots’…those are his words.”

The words rang in my ears as I reflected back on some of my conversations with my son, usually that occurred on my front porch in the evenings after he had been sent over by his mother for some infraction of the rules of life and we usually talked about mutual respect for people around you. Mutual respect comes in all forms and a lot of it stems out of not being an idiot when it comes to someone else’s life. With my son it’s about wet towels on the bathroom floor, and the fact that he has yet to find the dishwasher with a dirty plate…both of which drive the people around him crazy. You live with other people all your life, and one of life’s lessons is that you respect the people around you.

I had driven that into my son from an early age and it seemed to be working for us…although lately I had begun to wonder if I was really reaching him with the message. Then Mary reaffirmed me with the statement…”you don’t suffer idiots”.

“I’m a good guy huh” I replied, “I would have thought that he would have said something different since he still has no privileges after that D in Spanish last semester.”

“He said that you’re a hard ass…but he said that you loved him.”

I smiled at that, that my kid would certainly identify me as a lovable administrator of justice and simultaneously label me a “hard ass”.

“I think that we’re done here” I told Mary, “I have the urge to go hug my son.”