hoopleheads July 11, 2010
I woke up this morning to find my brother beside the bed asking me for money. I told him I didn’t have any money and reached down to check that my purse was still safely hidden under the bed beside me.
I went into the kitchen to find the house in an uproar. My brother had two dopehead friends waiting for him in the driveway and he was asking everyone in the family for money. No one would give him any money because we all know it would be spent on drugs of some kind.
My stepdad was saying, “if they don’t get out of my driveway, I’m getting out my gun.”
My mother was saying, “just get in the car and go. Please.”
My grandmother looked at me and said, “Standard Operating Procedure.”
I went outside to get my bag out of my car. I said hello to one of the guys sitting in a car waiting for my brother. He was nodding off and he dropped a lit cigarette into his lap and failed to notice it burning a hole in his pants.
My brother bitched for a while longer about no one giving him any money and finally left. 20 minutes later he called my mother. He asked her to come pick him up because the car had boken down.
Mom said, “I am going to be late for church. OK. Alright. Where are you?”
This is my mom’s life. Everyone has to hide their money, credit cards, and prescription medications because he will steal them and flat-out deny it. There is no point in talking to him about it because it always turns into an argument, which upsets my mother and does no good anyway. Mom won’t turn him out because he’s a paraplegic and mentally ill. She once managed to get him into a mental institution, but within a week they kicked him out.
Having a drug addict in your family is a life sentence without parole.
