Time To Wise Up

Time went by and so did the days he was supposed to pay child support. So it was no shock to me when they put a warrant out for his arrest for not showing up to court on a violation. He actually showed up to court saying that he would start paying. The judge asked me what I wanted to do, so I told him to put his ass in jail where it belonged. The judge said he was going to give him another chance and let him go with the promise that he would pay child support. So, why did he bother asking me then? I understood his reasoning - he thought that if he was in jail I would get no money at all. But what the judge didn't understand is that I knew he wasn't going to give it anyway! I got one payment out of it and that was about it. He had bought himself some time to skip off again. He always managed to find work off the books- I guess that was a genetic trait passed down to him from his father. His father had been a wanted man for stabbing someone in New Jersey quite a few years back. Anything he ever made was off the books, that way his mother could continue the facade of being a single mom of three. It had it's benefits, medicaid, food stamps, welfare money, plus her husband's wage that was unaccounted for. I learned some tricks from obseving the family, like putting your utilities in a relative's name so people couldn't find them via use of a social security card. I kept thinking to myself that if I were to milk off the system like that, I would have a Swiss bank account set up for myself for a later date. Instead of saving the money for a house or something significant in the future, there were always poker parties to be had, gold necklaces to be bought, etc. Not the way I would have spent my money. I was raised by a hard working IBM manager and a nurse living a middle class life in Westchester, NY. When I was little, I earned my keep. I would mow our lawn, do chores around the house, and earning a couple dollars here and there for walking the neighbors dogs and babysitting occasionally. A far cry from the in laws ' I'm entitled to...' attitiude. I saw a little of that early on when I went to get a money order for the ex's grandmother at the bank. She was mad at the bank because even though we were living in the 'Spanish area ' of the Bronx, they didn't speak Spanish at the bank. She had come over from Puerto Rico when she was young, but still spoke choppy English.



As time went by, I mourned the loss of in- laws that found themselves to busy to visit us or even call for that matter. There was nothing ever said about what he did or why he did it. My mother in law would tell me that maybe one day he would come back and that if he did I should be good to him. Are you kidding me? She must have thought that all women were the same- at this point I didn't want anybody's sloppy seconds after he got tired with Trish and besides that, who wants a husband who doesn't care if his own kids were eating or not?!