2015-03-18 - 12:26 p.m.
I have a story to tell. It's about dealing with a teenager. Since murder is not legal, I'll settle for a rant. My nephew, whom I love greatly, lives with me. He is a flighty so-and-so and he does not stick to anything. Hilariously enough, he keeps threatening to join the military. Part of me wants to see that happen so I can witness him finding out what happens when you make ill-advised decisions that you can't just arbitrarily change on a whim.
He listens to no advice... he heeds no warnings... common sense is for pussies. He gallops headlong into the most ridiculous of situations. His car has been towed because he parked in a no parking area, he's lost 3 cell phones, he locked himself out while I was out of town once and had to pay pop-a-lock to get back in. He is not an idiot, but he plays one on TV.
If I had actually squeezed him out my very own hoohah, I could not possibly love him more than I do. I am trying to extend whatever positive influence I can in my limited capacity as Aunt & Guardian. But the boy doesn't listen.
Here's what happened: All of a sudden, he started texting me from his job yesterday, asking me if I would be willing to buy a lawn mower, TOMORROW MORNING, for his new enterprise. He made promises of cutting my yard every week for free until the value of the lawn mower is met at a rate of 25 bucks per mowing. That sounds swell, unless you know this turd will spend your money up and then he will quickly decide lawn mowing is not for him, or he will procrastinate every week and the yard will look like hell from now on.
I put him off and told him to let me think about it, but he hammered it like his very life depended on it. He came home and continued hammering. I told him that this is not a great plan... it will take up his days off, he won't want to do it. It gets 9 degrees hotter than hell here in the summer... what if he goes into the service and I'm stuck with a lawn mower I didn't want? All of these were not worthy of consideration as far as he was concerned, since he had made up his mind and all. He had lined up 2 other yards to cut and this is his new plan for making money. Now, mind you, he very recently ignored everything I had to say about taking this new job at the spiffy loob for slightly above minimum wage. He is an experienced server who made twice as much money in half the time every shift, but a friend works at spiffy loob so HEY!!! Gotsta work there! Who needs money? Job satisfaction is so much more important! Needless to say, his ass is broke and he needs me to spend hundreds of dollars buying him into his own lawn service with his stellar record of sticking with things for an average of 6 minutes. He urged me to fire my yard guy, who does a great job for 25 bucks a week. I didn't want to do that because I know this turd is not really going to cut my grass. So after a grueling session with the boy sales pitching his new plan vigorously and making all kinds of promises, I agreed to go with him the next day to get a mower and weed eater and he would in exchange cut my yard and edge it. I have company coming and my yard is shaggy due to way too much rain lately. Yard guy couldn't get it done this week.
Skip to the next day... lawn mower buying day... home boy won't get out of bed. After relentlessly taking me through all the reasons why we HAD TO get up early and go buy this thing before I started my work day... he doesn't want to get up. So I thought we could just wait till lunch time. At lunch time, nephew starts seriously back-peddling. In a monumentally astounding move, even surpassing his own usual levels of ridiculousness, he actually bailed on the whole thing when it came down to using this particular day off to buy, assemble, and use this lawn mower that he HAD TO HAVE. Before a single blade of grass is cut, he totally quit. I just couldn't even believe it. Even for him, that was fast.
So I went to Lowe's and bought an old school push mower, came home, put that bad boy together myself and cut the yard. I'm a man baby, YEAH. I didn't want to fool with gasoline and complicated assembly and operation, so I just got the little push mower. I'm not planning to use it much, I assure you. This is just for times when it was too wet to mow on the right day and I have company coming or something. The next time I am approached for anything like this, the boy will be talking to the hand.
In other news.. there is but one chew bone yet 2 dogs desperately want it. Dexter found it somewhere and the baby is beside himself with neeeeeeed for the delicious, beautiful, candy-like chew bone. Dexter *could* chew it on the couch, where short stuff can't reach, but where is the fun in that?
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