Day 1238: Here there be monsters

[nagi_schwarz]

Sometimes I call the people I work with monsters. But I once said it best in one of my own stories. Deep down all monsters are people beside. I work with people. And it's not right for me to make judgments about the totality of their characters because I happen to always, always intersect with the worst parts of their lives. But sometimes the people I work with do monstrous things. And it's kinda scary.

I had court this week. I had meetings this week. I covered for coworkers and chatted with caseworkers. I met with kids and chatted with them got to know them, talked to them. Dancing was good times. We made a lot of progress on the basket dance, and we're really working out the kinks on the zill dance. Angela and I got together on Saturday night, shared food, watched the original Stargate movie, and tried new funky things with our solo. Kip even of a little cheerful and tried out the zills with us. He's a super good sport. We made slime with the cub scouts on Tuesday night (borax, water, PVC glue, food coloring for style), and it was fun. Finally the neighbor's yard is free of deer poop. I even rescued a dog this morning. My dogs alerted me to its presence outside the yard this morning by yipping like mad. Knowing that I'd be pretty upset if my dog escaped and how grateful I've been when someone has helped me find my dog, I ran the dog down - it was old and didn't get far - and called the number on its tag, put a photo of it on the Lost Pets Facebook page. And then the owner actually answered the phone, and we talked, and I ended up taking his dog home and shutting it in his shed till he could come home and free it. His suggestion was for me to open one of the back windows on his house and put the dog in through the window. I was too short to reach the window. And also me breaking into some dude's house in an all-white neighborhood seemed like a poor choice.

But the one thing that has overshadowed this week consistently is the news that one of my kids, one the ones I've had high hopes for, has been basically sweet-talking us this whole time, and he hasn't been getting better. In fact, he's been getting worse. But between an uncommunicative foster parent and a therapist who seems to have lost his objectivity, he's been getting worse, and he's been getting scarier. He's had consistent therapy. He's had supportive adults. He's had high-level treatment. And this week he brutally beat an animal to death. All of the things we dismissed as rumors, the fire-setting, the animal cruelty, came roaring back full force. And every day the story unfolded a little more, and every day the details got a little worse. The animal was sick, he wanted to shoot it, foster dad said wait, kid went ahead and killed it, and inhumanely. Worrisome. Turns out, animal wasn't sick. Turns out, animal was like his beloved pet. Kid lied to me about it. Turns out all those "Baby Bundy" jokes maybe weren't so inaccurate. He'll age out soon. What can we do for him that we haven't already done? What can we do but fight and fight and fight until the law runs out and we sit back and watch the news and wait to see him on there, with a headline about all the bodies he's left in his wake?

One of my friends said, I hope you don't have to be alone with him.

I was alone with him during a home visit last week.

I get that I'm not a great judge of character, but to have read this so wrong is scary. And sad. And aggravating.

I've had run-ins with clients and their parents in all manner of places. Out shopping. At church. On the street. Outside of my own house. I've always been paranoid about them figuring out where I live.

So, on Saturday night, when I was waiting for Angela to come by, I was pretty horrified when I heard a knock at the door and it wasn't Angela coming in, and when I asked who it was, Kip said, "There's some kid in the yard with a hatchet. Cody went out to talk to him."

A kid in the yard.

With a hatchet.

My heart stopped.

Turned out, nope, just a kid from the ward who knows Cody makes knives and wanted his hatchet sharpened.

Still, a pretty uncool thing to have happen.

So naturally Cody made a joke about having an axe to grind. And I made a joke about Cody's knife-sharpening skills bringing all the boys to the yard.

I can't even see my desk at work anymore. It's covered in trial evidence. Three worst weeks ever coming up: trial, oral argument, trial.

But I wrote a lot this week, and it was fun, and that was okay. I got cuddled by puppies and made cupcakes.

This week was the first week I seriously considered going back to mortgages. I saw that there was an opening at one to the old mortgage places I used to work with.

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

I realise this is totally outside my experience, but I don't think you should blame yourself for being taken in. Kids and adults like this succeed because they convince people they are changing. I suspect having had much more experience you would have seen the signs. But yeah, very scary.