Being "Seasoned"

I don’t know if I would call myself seasoned, but Bart and I have been doing this for a little over 9 years. There are certain things that send the blood pressure sky high and make the house tense. But, what I learned FINALLY is that if I remain as calm as I can be in the midst of those episodes then everyone recovers fairly quickly (except for the episode creator, but that’s another story).

Tonight John lost it. I could see it brewing from about 4, but the explosion didn’t occur until 6:30. He was trying to fill out job applications, but he couldn’t figure them out. I was in the middle of something, so I told him that he should fill out what he could and I would help him with the rest. (I figured Name and Address and Phone and stuff he should, at 15, be able to do). Instead he asked Bart to help him. Salinda came in to find out how to count a trumpet piece. I couldn’t figure it out, so I sent Salinda in to have Bart count out the rhythm for her. John came into my office saying “Why can’t Salinda do that in her room” to which I, not always intuitive about people’s moods, responded, “Why can’t you do that in your room?”

From that point on it went gradually downhill. Everyone and everything was bothering him. Finally, I caught him selling a CD of downloaded songs to Jimmy. I insisted that John give the money back as it was not legal to download songs and sell them. (I wasn’t going to get into the fact that it is illegal to download songs period, as that would have opened a zillion can of worms.) John refused to give the money back, so I handed him his CD and told Jimmy he was out five bucks because he just tried to buy something illegal.

The main point is that it makes me mad that John is taking advantage of Jimmy. Just because Jimmy doesn’t know HOW to download songs, he’s paying John $5 for something John got for free. He didn’t even pay for the blank CD.

Anyway, the almost end of the story is that John came in, broke the CD into many pieces, threw it all over the ground in the kitchen, and then threw the case against the wall, breaking it into many pieces. He then said, “Are you F****** happy? Are you? Are you?”“ at this point screaming at the top of his lungs. I said, very calmly, ”Actually, I am fairly disappointed in your behavior right now. I’m definitely not happy. “Yes you are! You are SO F****** happy!”

He then went downstairs, cranked his music loudly, and now he’s missing. I went outside and he pretty much threw everything in the garage he could find.

Here’s the reason for this blog entry (after all that background junk. A year or two ago I would have gotten very upset. I would have followed him down the stairs trying to get him to talk to me. I would have continued to escalate things by trying to get to the bottom of it and get it over with. I would be frantic right now about whether or not to call the cops and worried about him running away and what was going to happen.

But now, i figure this. One of two things has happened. He is either hiding in the yard (which was his past habit) or he has walked down to confirmation. Of course, there is a chance he could have ran away, but here’s the deal. Let’s say he did. Is me getting very stressed and upset going to make him come home sooner? Is it going to change anything? Nope. Bottom line is that my adding emotional stress to this is not going to have any effect whatsoever on the outcome of the night.

I think that is part of being seasoned. If John runs away, then tomorrow at our meeting where we are supposed to be talking about getting custody back, instead we will be talking about the fact that he ran. And it will play itself out. And I have learned that there isn’t a dang thing I will be able to do about it.

So, I’ll let it play itself out. If he is indeed in the yard or at confirmation, I will probably talk with him, let him clean up his mess, and let it go. If he isn’t, we’ll deal with it from there. But me getting all worked up isn’t going to help anything.

Nice thing is that within minutes of John’s outburst, everyone else around here was fine. Because I was fine. Before the house was in an uproar the whole time Bart and I were fuming.

I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.