I'd like to get some input about my oldest sonStephen and his journey through those formidable teenage years. This is obviously long so if you don’t have an interest, just ignore it but I truly am looking for feedback.
Stephen is my wife’s first son from a previous marriage obviously making him my set-son. She married just out of High School and divorced shortly thereafter. The guy she married was (and to this day, still is) an unadulterated piece of trash. They got divorced because my wife came home one day to find that he was cheating on her in their house. The woman he was cheating with had come over and parked her car in the alley around back, so as to not arouse the neighbors suspicions and to give them time to get her out, if my wife came home and found them. This didn’t work and my wife caught them red-handed. After the inevitable argument that followed she (my wife) turned to walk out on him. This piece of garbage threw some clothes on and followed her out into the front yard to ‘finish’ the argument and proceeded to jump her from behind and beat her before finally shoving her head in the ground and getting off of her saying, “Now what do you got to say, Bi_ _ _!â€
Like I said, an unadulterated piece of trash.
She got out of there fine after that and the divorce went through without much more incident. No charges filed as result of an agreement between the two of them in which he would get out of her and Stephens life forever. So once the divorce was over, they both went on their way. He eventually married that same woman (more on that topic to come) and she eventually found me and we got married about 3-4 years later.
When I came into the picture Stephen was he was about 6 and I was in my early 20’s. It was a difficult marriage for a long time, neither of us had an education and it wasn’t long till the realization came that getting that education was going to be our best option out of financial obscurity. I enrolled at ITT as a full time student and worked full time at a convenience store before getting a job at Kinkos while throwing a newspaper part time. Money was always tight. Making things more difficult the wifey soon had our first son Brandon.
Because of the financial problems we were having there were a lot of fights and this inevitably became a major issue between me and her parents as well. They didn’t like me from the start and in no uncertain terms let me know just how they felt. I didn’t care, I was committed to seeing this out and their favor was not something I was particularly looking for. The problem was that they didn’t seem to have a problem letting Stephen and Brandon know just how they felt about me and the ripple effects of this magnified over the years.
When Stephen was ready to enter into High School, his youngest brother (Brian and William my twins born 4 years after Brandon) were also a part of the picture and we faced yet another problematic milestone in where to send him. The school district we lived in was a poor excuse for a school despite the fact that it was my wife’s alma marter. It was gang riddled and we could not in good conscience send him there. In the summer that preceded Stephen’s freshman year, we discovered that the wifey’s ex was living in a nearby School district with a much better school. Although it went against everything I felt was right, we approached him about using his address to get Stephen into the school. As it turned out, it appeared that he had grown up and appeared to be very humble and apologetic about the past and welcomed the opportunity to help Stephen saying that he understood that he’d have no interaction. It all seemed to good to be true, and of course ... it was.
Stephen’s freshman year went pretty smoothly and in basketball he excelled. He was becoming a BMOC and obviously he enjoyed every minute of it. However, as his head began to grown so did his anger at me. Compounding the issue, the wifey parents (and more specifically, her mother) continually added fuel to the fire by siding with the boy on every parental issue that came up where he needed to be disciplined and they routinely pitted Andera against me in these confrontations citing that I wasn’t Stephen’s real dad. A topic that was clearly not lost on Stephen.
Going into the following summer, Stephen struck up a dialog with Andrea’s mother about his father and that when she let the beans spill about how he was able to go to that school. Over that summer, Stephen became more vocal about his interest to meet his father. Two things happened at this time that had irrevocable ramifications in our lives.
1) Andrea and I started going to a marriage counseling and it was one of the best decisions we’d ever made. Without question, it saved our marriage. She realized that she couldn’t allow her parents to continue to manipulate her into having their will circumvent my role as husband and leader of the family or our combined interest in how to raise Stephen (as well as our other boys, which was slowly becoming another issue).
2) Believe it or not, Andrea’s parent hired her ex to do some odd jobs for them. They own several rent houses and properties, and at the time they didn’t see anything wrong with getting this slime to do some work for them because he worked for cheap.
Now you need to know more about this guy if we’re going to continue. I'm going to call him Donnie to make it easier to explain. Donnie is a grifter, his whole family is into the grifting of one kind or another. To make matters even worse, the woman he cheated with and eventually married is a member of Wiccan which some of you probably know is just the modern name witches use to identify themselves. Donnie and this woman had three sons of their own and they had several shady dealings over the years. The most recent at the time, was that the woman had gotten employed in the schools district (yup, the same one) before they found out that she was a member of Wiccan. When they started looking into letting her go for issues not associated with her beliefs, she brought in the ACLU and claimed that she was being terminated for her beliefs. The school backed down and she continued to draw a check (though she rarely went to work). She had ‘em scared. When we asked for their help we didn’t know about the woman, nor did we know about their living conditions. They lived in a barn (literally, a barn) and the rooms were divided by bed sheet draped over clothes lines nailed from one side of the barn to the other.
When Stephen entered into his Sophmore year he was 6’-6" and was almost immediately bumped up to the basketbal varsity team where he continued to excel. That’s when we started to get the feeling that Donnie was trying to ease himself into the picture. There were a lot of little signals but nothing big enough for us to realize what was happening under the surface. The confrontations between Stephen and I became more routine and more vocal and his demeanor was also changing in that he showed no fear of any discipline, largely because I couldn't spank him and even when I grounded him it wasn’t generally enforced … until Anadrea and I finished the counseling classes. Then she and I stood united and punishments (specifically groundings) were enforced.
But, by then, it was too late.
On one Thursday night, I had came home to find the passenger side door of the suburban that I had given to Stephen open and unable to close because it had been somehow wrecked. I went in to find Stephen (Andrea wasn’t home at the time) and asked him what had happened (trying to be as calm as possible because I knew I’d be interrogated later about how this went down) and his response (without even turning away from the TV show he was watching) was, “Oh yeah, it got wrecked.†I pretty much lost it at that point and told him to get his butt outside and do something to try and fix it. He protested saying that it was his car and he could do what he wanted. It went back and forth until Andrea came home and then we decided that he’d fix it over the weekend while I was away over the weekend.
When I got home the following Sunday night he and Andrea we’re working on the door with one of his friends there. When I came up, Stephen was repeatedly slamming a mallet into some bent metal trying to force it back into place. A quick glance was all that was needed to see that his efforts were going to be in vain because the metal he was trying to force back into place had nothing to do with why the door wouldn’t shut. Trying to tell him this it became very evident immediately that he was in rare form as he threw the mallet at my feet and said something smart. I don’t remember the comment because the look he gave me spoke volumes over anything and everything that came out of his mouth.
I took a step back, threw down my bags and said something to the effect of, “If you think your man enough to disrespect me like this then have at it. Its your move.†Yup, the tension went through the roof and both of us were in a major standoff. This was what everything had lead up to and both of us were beyond angry. I knew what cards I held and Stephen though he knew what cards he held.
I’m stopping here because this is turning out to be a lot longer than I figured it would be and considering that on some forums, long post don’t always get read and because I'm new, I want to make sure that someone is still with me at this point and/or interested in hearing the rest. If there's enough responses I will continue.
Nu
</ARTICLE>Stephen is my wife’s first son from a previous marriage obviously making him my set-son. She married just out of High School and divorced shortly thereafter. The guy she married was (and to this day, still is) an unadulterated piece of trash. They got divorced because my wife came home one day to find that he was cheating on her in their house. The woman he was cheating with had come over and parked her car in the alley around back, so as to not arouse the neighbors suspicions and to give them time to get her out, if my wife came home and found them. This didn’t work and my wife caught them red-handed. After the inevitable argument that followed she (my wife) turned to walk out on him. This piece of garbage threw some clothes on and followed her out into the front yard to ‘finish’ the argument and proceeded to jump her from behind and beat her before finally shoving her head in the ground and getting off of her saying, “Now what do you got to say, Bi_ _ _!â€
Like I said, an unadulterated piece of trash.
She got out of there fine after that and the divorce went through without much more incident. No charges filed as result of an agreement between the two of them in which he would get out of her and Stephens life forever. So once the divorce was over, they both went on their way. He eventually married that same woman (more on that topic to come) and she eventually found me and we got married about 3-4 years later.
When I came into the picture Stephen was he was about 6 and I was in my early 20’s. It was a difficult marriage for a long time, neither of us had an education and it wasn’t long till the realization came that getting that education was going to be our best option out of financial obscurity. I enrolled at ITT as a full time student and worked full time at a convenience store before getting a job at Kinkos while throwing a newspaper part time. Money was always tight. Making things more difficult the wifey soon had our first son Brandon.
Because of the financial problems we were having there were a lot of fights and this inevitably became a major issue between me and her parents as well. They didn’t like me from the start and in no uncertain terms let me know just how they felt. I didn’t care, I was committed to seeing this out and their favor was not something I was particularly looking for. The problem was that they didn’t seem to have a problem letting Stephen and Brandon know just how they felt about me and the ripple effects of this magnified over the years.
When Stephen was ready to enter into High School, his youngest brother (Brian and William my twins born 4 years after Brandon) were also a part of the picture and we faced yet another problematic milestone in where to send him. The school district we lived in was a poor excuse for a school despite the fact that it was my wife’s alma marter. It was gang riddled and we could not in good conscience send him there. In the summer that preceded Stephen’s freshman year, we discovered that the wifey’s ex was living in a nearby School district with a much better school. Although it went against everything I felt was right, we approached him about using his address to get Stephen into the school. As it turned out, it appeared that he had grown up and appeared to be very humble and apologetic about the past and welcomed the opportunity to help Stephen saying that he understood that he’d have no interaction. It all seemed to good to be true, and of course ... it was.
Stephen’s freshman year went pretty smoothly and in basketball he excelled. He was becoming a BMOC and obviously he enjoyed every minute of it. However, as his head began to grown so did his anger at me. Compounding the issue, the wifey parents (and more specifically, her mother) continually added fuel to the fire by siding with the boy on every parental issue that came up where he needed to be disciplined and they routinely pitted Andera against me in these confrontations citing that I wasn’t Stephen’s real dad. A topic that was clearly not lost on Stephen.
Going into the following summer, Stephen struck up a dialog with Andrea’s mother about his father and that when she let the beans spill about how he was able to go to that school. Over that summer, Stephen became more vocal about his interest to meet his father. Two things happened at this time that had irrevocable ramifications in our lives.
1) Andrea and I started going to a marriage counseling and it was one of the best decisions we’d ever made. Without question, it saved our marriage. She realized that she couldn’t allow her parents to continue to manipulate her into having their will circumvent my role as husband and leader of the family or our combined interest in how to raise Stephen (as well as our other boys, which was slowly becoming another issue).
2) Believe it or not, Andrea’s parent hired her ex to do some odd jobs for them. They own several rent houses and properties, and at the time they didn’t see anything wrong with getting this slime to do some work for them because he worked for cheap.
Now you need to know more about this guy if we’re going to continue. I'm going to call him Donnie to make it easier to explain. Donnie is a grifter, his whole family is into the grifting of one kind or another. To make matters even worse, the woman he cheated with and eventually married is a member of Wiccan which some of you probably know is just the modern name witches use to identify themselves. Donnie and this woman had three sons of their own and they had several shady dealings over the years. The most recent at the time, was that the woman had gotten employed in the schools district (yup, the same one) before they found out that she was a member of Wiccan. When they started looking into letting her go for issues not associated with her beliefs, she brought in the ACLU and claimed that she was being terminated for her beliefs. The school backed down and she continued to draw a check (though she rarely went to work). She had ‘em scared. When we asked for their help we didn’t know about the woman, nor did we know about their living conditions. They lived in a barn (literally, a barn) and the rooms were divided by bed sheet draped over clothes lines nailed from one side of the barn to the other.
When Stephen entered into his Sophmore year he was 6’-6" and was almost immediately bumped up to the basketbal varsity team where he continued to excel. That’s when we started to get the feeling that Donnie was trying to ease himself into the picture. There were a lot of little signals but nothing big enough for us to realize what was happening under the surface. The confrontations between Stephen and I became more routine and more vocal and his demeanor was also changing in that he showed no fear of any discipline, largely because I couldn't spank him and even when I grounded him it wasn’t generally enforced … until Anadrea and I finished the counseling classes. Then she and I stood united and punishments (specifically groundings) were enforced.
But, by then, it was too late.
On one Thursday night, I had came home to find the passenger side door of the suburban that I had given to Stephen open and unable to close because it had been somehow wrecked. I went in to find Stephen (Andrea wasn’t home at the time) and asked him what had happened (trying to be as calm as possible because I knew I’d be interrogated later about how this went down) and his response (without even turning away from the TV show he was watching) was, “Oh yeah, it got wrecked.†I pretty much lost it at that point and told him to get his butt outside and do something to try and fix it. He protested saying that it was his car and he could do what he wanted. It went back and forth until Andrea came home and then we decided that he’d fix it over the weekend while I was away over the weekend.
When I got home the following Sunday night he and Andrea we’re working on the door with one of his friends there. When I came up, Stephen was repeatedly slamming a mallet into some bent metal trying to force it back into place. A quick glance was all that was needed to see that his efforts were going to be in vain because the metal he was trying to force back into place had nothing to do with why the door wouldn’t shut. Trying to tell him this it became very evident immediately that he was in rare form as he threw the mallet at my feet and said something smart. I don’t remember the comment because the look he gave me spoke volumes over anything and everything that came out of his mouth.
I took a step back, threw down my bags and said something to the effect of, “If you think your man enough to disrespect me like this then have at it. Its your move.†Yup, the tension went through the roof and both of us were in a major standoff. This was what everything had lead up to and both of us were beyond angry. I knew what cards I held and Stephen though he knew what cards he held.
I’m stopping here because this is turning out to be a lot longer than I figured it would be and considering that on some forums, long post don’t always get read and because I'm new, I want to make sure that someone is still with me at this point and/or interested in hearing the rest. If there's enough responses I will continue.
Nu
