First, the jail called to let us know that Mike went to court this morning and there were three choices. 1) We could bail him out for $10,000. 2) He could move home with us and obey all our rules and go back to jail if he didn't. 3) He could sit in jail until court on June 18th.
Bart and I talked about it. The same old conversation. Do we bring him home and watch the other kids spin out of control so that he can obey our rules for 4-5 days until he broke our rules to go back to jail? Can't do it. Not worth it. We could lie to ourselves and say that this time he will make it. This time he'll obey the rules. But it wouldn't happen.
Can we bail him out? No, we don't have $10,000.
We called the jail and told them he couldn't come home and we weren't bailing him out.
We were at Tony's sixth grade graduation, which will have to go into another blog entry, but while we were there he called here collect 4 times as recorded by the machine. I answered on the fifth time because I was here and accepted another collect call. Against my better judgment.
Famous lines from that call were:
"How much money do I have in my savings account?" (He has no savings account -- there are a few savings bonds but they don't mature for a few more years).
"Sell my snowboard and give me the $250" (He owes us $1000 from stuff borrowed and stuff he stole).
"You're supposed to be my parents."
"I won't even be graduating this Spring" (said as if to accuse me, because it's my fault?)
"I can't believe you believe what everyone is telling you. Everyone is lying. I did everything I was supposed to do and they just set me up."
I finally told him that he needed to face the consequences for what he had done and that I wasn't interested in paying money to listen to him blame me for his current situation. His response,
"That's because you don't care about me."
I simply said goodbye and hung up.
I'm hoping Bart will have it in him to visit him during visiting hours this weekend, because I'm not sure that I do.
2 comments:
My fear would be that, even if you had the $10,000, he would run and the case would turn into a failure-to-appear, which would land him in jail again (when they caught him) and permanently cost you $10,000.
Unless you are dealing with a wage earner who is responsible for supporting a family, there is rarely any benefit to bailing someone out of jail. It's too easy for them to walk away, especially if it's your money that's being used for the bail out.
I think that you and Bart have done all you can. Sadly, it boils down to the fact that Mike simply isn't going to make good choices in his life, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
I'm very sorry.
Claudia, You can request that he not be allowed to call you at all...that's what I've had to do before. Sadly sometimes kids like ours don't even yet hit rock bottom after stuff like this. For example: my Joey
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