All right, back to the real story.

 

From June 17th through June 30th, the boy was at the ranch with my Mom and her guy. He worked 6 hours a day, and earned $8 an hour. He also was paid $5 for each ground squirrel he shot with the pellet rifle she gave him. (Remember, he’s 14.) According to him, he worked side by side with a kind of rough guy who we’ll call Jim. Jim is much older than my son, and Jim would show up for work some days, and not show up on other days. Why? I have no idea. Where I work, if you don’t show up for work, you don’t work there anymore, but maybe that’s just me. Jim taught him how to fix fences, how to repair sprinklers, and many other things. He went to lunch in town with Jim more often than not, hanging out with Jim and his buddies during that brief forty five minute lunch.

 

The boy was a little different when he came home. He seemed a bit stronger, taller, and more self-assured. We thought this was a positive thing,

 

On July 1st, summer school started. Right away, the boy started telling us how boring it was. It was all verbs. ALL verbs, and many people didn’t understand them, so they spend two of the three weeks of summer school discussing verbs, which of course, my boy understood completely. He was incredibly bored. He had homework, but very little of it, and since it was all verbs, it went very quickly, and he was able to do most of it in class.

 

Now, after it is all over, I can piece in an incident here for you. Perhaps now is not a good time to do this, but it might be the right time. I really don’t know. On the third day of summer school, the boy bought his first knife on ebay. It was apparently technically a switchblade. I know that now, I did not know that then. A switchblade is categorized as any knife that can be operated single handedly, and, in the state of California, it is not legal to own a switchblade. For that matter, I don’t think it is legal to sell them on ebay, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. The boy bought the knife using some of the cash that he earned at the Ranch. Please do note that when he came home, we made him put most of the money in savings, with the understanding that he could spend some, but half must remain in savings. We put it in his college savings, where he could not touch it. But, that left approximately $350 in the regular saving. I never would have believed that a person could send cash through the mail for ebay purchases and actually receive the “goods” but you can. The boy proved it.

 

I guess I am truly a trusting person. I believed him when he told me he wanted the knife for when he worked at the ranch and that he wanted to be able to help me at the community garden that we work in with the knife. I know better now. There was some other reason for the knife, I’m sure of it. Then again, I could be wrong, who knows. We probably won’t ever truly know the actual motivation.

 

When summer school ended, the boy was ready to go back to the Ranch. So ready, in fact, that he contacted his grandmother independently and asked her how soon she could come and get him. We thought it was good. He would have supervision, be working, and not be alone for hours at a time, while we were at work, wishing we were home doing something fun with him.

 

Oh, one bit I’ve left off. In January, I started work at a new job where I was twenty five miles from home. Prior to that, I’d been about eight miles from home, which is close enough to get home very quickly if need be. The new job required full time away from home work, with more flexible hours to be sure, but no ability to work at home. Better benefits, but those don’t kick in for a while, as you know if you have ever changed jobs.

 

Grandma must have been in a different frame of mind than she was on the previous trip, because, she said yes, but she spent a lot of time and energy scolding him for not writing thank you notes (which she called bread and butter notes, meaning that if you send bread and butter you will be invited to come again.) The boy has never been especially good at writing thank you notes, but they have always been provided to him along with addresses and stamps so that he could send them. I guess I needed to be more of a policing Mom, tracking him around and making sure he did what he was supposed to. Just not my style for something like a thank you note.

 

Enough for this post. Stay tuned. I’m actively writing about it now.