Looooooong Story

Funny thing happened to me on the way to bed last night...

Thursday, Tommy went out job hunting. At 16/almost 17, he finally realized that money is a good thing and he'd like some. So he headed to the mall and the local stores to fill out applications. In his travels he ran into an old acquaintance named Marcus. I had never met Marcus - he was a kid Tom went to school with. They never hung out outside of school, but they saw each other sometimes because they had mutual friends.

Friday, he went back to talk to the manager of one of the stores about a job, and there was Marcus again. After he hit the store he was supposed to go back to, he and Marcus hung out and checked out the games or the girls or whatever it is teenage boys do at the mall. When it was time to come home, Tom brought Marcus with him. He was so polite and well mannered and friendly, I was impressed. You see, Tom has the WORST taste in friends, and I've hated them all, except one. So I joked with him about how he'd finally made a friend I didn't have to hate and when Tom asked if he could stay the night, I happily agreed. Marcus told us that his whole family was dead basically. His mother died of cancer, his father was killed in an accidental shooting, and his 13 year old sister was raped and murdered, so he'd been working for years and had his own place.

On Saturday, he and Marcus were supposed to go back to Marcus apartment, and Tom was going to spend the night there. I was a little worried about the idea of Tom hanging out where there were no parents, in this 19 year old kid's own apartment, but I have to trust his judgment sometime - so I told him it was OK, but to be home at 1 on Sunday and I went to the hospital. We got home, did what we do and got ready to go to bed. Actually, Scott went to bed, I was making last night's post, and there's a knock on the door at 12:24 in the morning. It was Marcus. He wanted to know if Tommy was HERE.

this is going to be another long ass post!

Of course, I freak out because Tommy is supposed to be with Marcus, but he says (this is where the bullshit starts stinking) the people he was staying with kicked him out and threw his stuff in the yard. The police came, and told him he just had to leave, so he called someone to come get him and he left, only Tom didn't go with him, he was still at the apartment - with the people who threatened to kick Marcus's ass - and he hadn't seen him since SIX O'CLOCK!

So my son is "missing" - hasn't been seen in 6 1/2 hours, and was last seen in the company of a group of guys who intended to kick the ass of the friend he was with. Lovely.

..insert controlled panic here..

I told Marcus to sit down and got Scott out of bed, and when I got as much of the story as I could, Scott and Marcus went to the apartment to get Tommy if he was still there. If not they were going to hunt all over town. I took up my watchpost at the window, to watch every car pass while chanting to myself, "Please let that be Scott WITH Tommy!" each time I heard one coming. Of course the first 3856234274949 weren't them. And my mindset kept vacillating from "Oh please let him be OK!" to "Oh I'm going to kick his ass, sell his car, and NEVER let him leave this house again."

One hour and 12 minutes later, the van pulls up and I take off for the driveway. It's Scott and Tommy, but no Marcus. I say to Tom, WHERE.HAVE.YOU.BEEN!? Tom just looks at me and Scott says, "Wait till you hear THIS story honey!" and LAUGHS. OK, no, laughing isn't the correct thing to do right now! What the hell happened to the strong strict Dad I'm used to?!

So here's the story, as short as I can make it. Marcus and Tom go to the apartment, which he thinks is Marcus's own apartment, and only HIS apartment. And as they walk up the sidewalk to the door chitchatting, Marcus "realizes" that he's lost the house key, and tries to get in the window, but he's too big, so he asks Tommy to do it.

I heard the moan you just let out, and yeah, keep it up, it gets good

So Tom goes in and opens the door, and Marcus comes in, changes clothes, grabs a phone, puts on a ring from the bedroom, shows Tom a bag of clothes that are at the door that he told Tom he could have. They hang out for a few minutes and Marcus goes to the other room. When he comes out they decide to hang out at WalMart, so off they go.

At WalMart, 2 teenage girls come up to them and say that "Jaime" wants to talk to them because he thinks that Marcus broke into their house.

Yeah, Tommy unwittingly broke into the guys house with this kid for Christ sake. So they go back to the apartment and Tommy gets the whole picture, and immediately tells the people what happened. Marcus ran like hell, and was gone by the time the cops came. He told them the whole story, the people fed him dinner and shit, and told Tommy to stay there a while in case Marcus was out there somewhere waiting to kick his ass for telling the truth. Then Scott showed up, and they thought he was there on Marcus's behalf - to kick Tommy's ass for him. This was quite possibly contributed to by Scott's first words, which were, "What in hell are you doing here? Get in the friggin van RIGHT NOW!!!"

So Tommy starts to walk down the stairs from the apartment balcony to the van. Remember, Marcus is in the van when he pulls up. When Tom realized he was in the van, he told Scott there was NO WAY he was getting in the van with him in there. So Scott got out to see what was up. Tommy would never say that to Scott without good reason, ever.

Eventually Scott got the story out of the family that lived there. Marcus (aged 16)had given them the same sob story about his family and they were letting him stay there. He repaid the favor by breaking in and stealing cell phones, jewelry and clothes. The guy (Jaime) talked to Scott for a long time and showed him the cop's card and stuff and explained what had happened, and then had a little talk with the kid. They were talking when Scott left, but I wouldn't be surprised if he kicked the shit out of the kid.

So, long (very very long) story short, Tommy was gullible, but in the end he made the right choices, despite how many times he'd said he'd never rat out a friend. Guess he figured out pretty quick that Marcus was no friend at all. He'd realized his mistakes and made them right, like the respectable young man I'd hoped I'd taught him to be.

Now if only he'd CALLED HOME!!

Anyway, he'll probably have to testify in court when it comes to that, but I'm glad that if it had to happen at all, that it turned out the way it did.

There's more to the story, but since I was up till 3:15 last night, and up again early this morning, and it's now 12:30am... I'm going to bed. Besides, this post is already entirely too damned long!