What a wuss

I like to think of myself as a kind of Tough Guy. Not necessarily Dirty Harry or anything, but I generally feel like I can hold my own. I'm an ex-cop. Before that I worked in the maximum security unit for criminals at our state mental hospital. If you're going to be scared of something, a 300 pound psychotic man who thinks you are one of the aliens out to get him should do the trick, but I really didn't mind too much. However, I do have this unnatural fear of spiders and snakes. I can deal with them if I prepare myself mentally, but if one surprises me, I’ll scream like a girl. Give me a guy with a knife or gun any day over a big hairy spider on my skin.

Well, now you can add ex-girlfriends to the list of my unnatural fears. Very recently, a girl I dated almost 10 years ago started working at the same place where I work part time. I was a pretty big jerk when we broke up. We only dated for a few months, but during that time she had managed to go from someone who seemed to share the same interests with me to a nagging almost-spouse. She started to complain about the time I spent with my friends, felt that my hobbies were too dangerous, and generally started trying to change me. You know the old saying “A man marries a woman and hopes she won’t change, while a woman marries a man hoping he will change…” In the short time we dated she had managed to pretty much offend all of my friends and family in some way. Be it telling my best friend that I shouldn’t be going shooting with him because it was much too dangerous, to getting jealous of another very good friend who was a woman (who has always been like another sister to me), to inviting herself to a lunch date my sisters who live in distant states had planned for just themselves to catch up. It became apparent that I really needed to get out, and get out quickly. Instead of being a man and just telling this girl that she was too ‘clingy’, I gave her a very believable BS story about how I was having ‘commitment issues’ as a result of my divorce a couple of years earlier, and that I ‘just needed some space’. I then promptly dropped off the face of the earth without ever talking to her again.

Which brings us back to the present, where she has just started working at the same place I do. Our jobs are very different, with her working a few hours during the day while I work in the evenings. On top of that, aside from receiving my assignment at the start of my shift and returning completed work the next day, I don’t spend any time in the office – I work out in the field – so when I found out that she started working for the office, I laughed and shrugged it off. Right up until today, that is.

Generally I go into the office to return my completed work late enough that under normal circumstances I would never run into this woman, so I really hadn’t mentally prepared myself for any contact with her. Never gave it a second thought. Today was a different story. I went to the office on my lunch break from my full time job, as I often do on days when I’m not working the part time job in the evening. The office is the opposite direction from my house, so I can get a head start on evening traffic if I return the previous nights work during my break. As I pulled in to the parking lot, I spot this girl’s car. “Oh no” I thought to myself as I realized my dilemma. My heart started pounding, my eyes narrowed, and my stomach seemed to drop – classic symptoms of an adrenaline dump. Here I am having a panic reaction at the mere thought of running into this girl. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and walked in. There she was, sitting at a desk at the far end of the room, facing away from me. I start to slide over to a computer as far away from her as possible, hoping to check my stuff in and be out of there before she notices, but then I spot her coat hanging on the chair at that computer, and her purse laying against the keyboard. Looks like I’ll have to use the other computer… which is right behind her…

I nonchalantly walk across the room to that computer, silently praying that she will not turn around. Ordinarily I would say hello to someone sitting where she is, but there is no chance in hell that I’m making ANY unnecessary noise. I sit down, with my back to her, and log into the computer. I start checking my work in, and notice that my hands are shaking – that damn adrenaline is still pumping at max levels. While working, I’m trying to figure out how I can extract myself without her at least trying to say hi – she’s way too friendly to not at least do that. Just as I am finishing up, and envisioning myself running from the room like a madman, she gets up and walks to another room, to talk to our boss.

My silent prayers have been answered, and my escape has been provided! Usually I go in and chat with my boss for a minute or two, but there’s no chance of that happening today. I get up and slip out of the office without making any noise. As the door latched quietly behind me, it hit me – I am SUCH A WUSS!

The sins of his father...

"And he walked in all the sins of his father..." 1 Kings 15:3

It's amazing how things you do in your youth can come back to haunt you in later years.
For some, it's those embarrasing brushes with the law. For others, it's the abuse to their bodies from chemical refreshments which do some sort of permanent damage. In my case, it is a certain run in with a high school administrator for which my son may have to pay consequences.

Flash back just over a decade ago, and you would find me in high school, doing my best to avoid school work. I was much more interested in the aerodynamic principles of a frisbee or the laws of motion applied to a football at the park than anything taking place inside a classroom. Throughout the duration of my high school career, there was one Assistant Principal who could not stand my cavalier attitude toward her sacred institution. We shall call her “Rosanna”. I played Ferris Bueller to her Mr. Rooney. She hated me, and I hated her right back. She tried to get me tossed out of my high school and sent to an 'alternative' high school for students with behavior problems, right up through October of my senior year. I had a number of major family issues which had contributed to my delinquency the year before, and now it seemed that had provided her the needed ammunition in order to be victorious.

She called me into her office. “Sit down, Mr. Reid…” she sneered as she closed the door. Then she sat down at her desk and pulled out a small stack of papers. “It seems that I have what I need to finally send you to another school” she said as she searched for a pen. It was at that moment that the door opened, and in walks the Principal, whom I was actually on very good terms with. “I’ll take it from here, Rosanna” she said. She added “and you will no longer be concerned with Mr. Reid. If he has any discipline issues, I will handle them personally. Mr. Reid, if you will follow me please…” and walked out with no further debate. I thought that Rosanna’s head would explode. If looks could kill, her eyes would have opened up with laser beams and obliterated me on the spot. She never spoke another word to me. The principal took me into her office, and asked me to try to be better behaved, and to stay away from Rosanna. That was the end of that particular story in my book. Until recently.

I have a son who is in junior high. He’s a pretty good kid for the most part. His mother and I ended our relationship before he was born, but I try to spend as much time with him as I can. You know, the usual ‘every other weekend, one night a week' thing. Up until now, I’ve tried to be very involved in his schooling. I went to his school more than a few times to deal with the inevitable trips to the principals office, to meet with teachers, and the like. But it seems that Rosanna has had some advancements in her career over the last decade. She is now the principal of my son’s junior high school. She doesn't know that he is my son, because he has a different last name. I really don't want her to find out that I am related to him, because I know she is vindictive enough to take some of her unfulfilled frustrations from her previous experience with me on him. Now, when my son gets into trouble, I have to ask my wife to help me out in these situations, and she worries (rightfully so) about creating a rift in her relationship with him.

I guess that the moral of the story is that you may not want to torch the bridge, just in case your kids have to cross it…