* Id: GrowingUp * Revision: 1 * State: submitted * * Log: * Revision 1 1998/05/04 Bill A. Warren * Initial submitted version. * * Checked-out 1998/11/26 Roel van der Meulen * * Withdrawn 1998/12/01 * Not really suitable Guide material. Return-path: Received: from golden.argonet.co.uk [194.131.104.13] by bg34.argonet.co.uk with pop3 (ANTmail1.29b) id po0162226; Mon, 04 May 98 12:30 +0100 Envelope-to: mseaborn@argonet.co.uk Delivery-date: Mon, 4 May 1998 05:50:15 +0100 Received: from (lemur) [199.232.112.37] (root) by golden.argonet.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.82 #2) id 0yWDCc-0003mP-00; Mon, 4 May 1998 05:50:10 +0100 Received: from snark.wizard.com ([199.171.28.3]) by lemur with esmtp (ident root using rfc1413) id m0yWDHW-00000uC (Debian Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #2); Mon, 4 May 1998 00:55:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: from billwarr (pm3-2-071.wizard.com [208.211.54.71]) by snark.wizard.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA07716 for ; Sun, 3 May 1998 21:49:53 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19980504045049.006772e0@wizard.com> X-Sender: billman@wizard.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=====================_894282649==_" Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 21:50:49 -0700 To: submit@megadodo.com From: "Bill A. Warren" Subject: Guide article X-Attachments: C:\WINPGG\Growing Up Worst Things To Happen When.new; Status: X-IS-UID: 894285491 I have written the attached guide article. Please look it over and help me submit it. Thanks for you time, Bill 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456 %t Growing Up, Worst Things To Happen When * Formatted/Saved by WinPGG v1.1 (1998/05/03) %n R %s What Happens When The Person You Love Is Grounded Forever. %a Bill A. Warren (billman@wizard.com) %d 19980503 %e What could be worse than having the person you love most in the universe, be taken away from you?[1] You finally find that perfect someone, someone who loves you as much and maybe more than you love them.... And then you meet their parents. Take my situation: I am 19, my girlfriend is 16 [2] Her father used to beat her and her mom, til her mom left him and met this other guy (who happens to be an ex-con, who has violent mood swings whenever he loses at nintendo or when he fights with her mother.) BOTH her mom and her stepfather are VERY strict. They never let her go anywhere, and they force her to do chores constantly.[3]. Nobody else helps her out either.[4] They know we have a very intamite relationship, and they don't mind as long as we are careful. But, they are always waiting to jump on us and ground her at the slightest provacation.[see 4 also] They will only let us talk to each other twice a day on the phone for 15 minutes at a time. I never see her on weekends because they always have her doing chores. I walk her home 3 times a week from school, and stay for a couple of hours on those days.[5] They claim to "love me like their own," but they always ground her from me. (becuase I'm the only thing they can take away from her that she really cares about.) My problem is they are the most arrogant, weak-minded people in the world. My parents and I wish there were something we could do, like call protective services, but then she would get taken away from me and forced into a foster home, and then her step-father would retaliate by throwing me in jail for dating a minor, although he willingly let's us do whatever we want.[6] He's always making rude sexual comments and groping her, her mother doesn't care. And when she complains, he just does more of it, and they get mad at her and say she has a bad attitude. They let us do whatever we want on one condition, that we don't do anything in front of the kids. Which we don't, but when we try to go to another room just so we talk in privacy, they follow us, and we get in trouble, and she gets grounded for a month.[7] Now comes the hard part. Since I cannot win in any situation when she gets grounded, I feel more helpless than if she were captured by Dominion Troops and held in an interment camp on the other side of the galaxy, and I couldn't take the Defiant through the wormhole because of damage caused by the recent battle with the Borg (my own parents [8]) Okay, so I may be over exagerating the severity of the problem, after all, being away makes us so much fonder of each other and we enjoy the time we get to be with each that much more, but I still feel so helpless when she gets grounded. I usually cry for the first couple of days, but then we sort of sneak around anyway, becuase her parents work on tuesdays, and I can still walk her home, and spend 2 hours with her, before one of the comes home from work. And even if they are home, I still walk her home, til a certian point, and then catch the bus, or drive home (assuming I have the car.) During the time we are seperated, I usually just stay home, avoid most of my friends[9] and play around on my computer, write her a letter, and think about how bad I feel without her. I know I shouldn't think about that, but I see her within a couple of days anyway becuase we sneak around. Recently, they found a letter she was writing to me, about how she misses our only day to be alone on Tuesday [10] They did not seem to mind at first, They had a nice attitude about it, saying "Well, you gotta do it sometime!" Things were finally going to go our way, I was getting along with them for once, and since my parents are moving in a few months, I was going to move in with her, once I got a job that could support us, and they would okay it. Then, I walked her home 2 days ago. She hadn't been grounded for 2 months [11] and we were sitting on the couch while her 4 year old brother was intently paying attention to a video game. Since I had forgetton we are not supposed to do anything in front of them, and he wasnt aware of us behind him anyway, I decided to give her a hickey ( I have never been able to do this for her, and she was dissapointed because she wanted to show one off to her friends.) So I finally succeeded, but I gave it to her in the most noticible place on her neck ( A spot that cannot be covered up unless you are wearing a scarf. ) We both knew he would see it, so she thought it would be best if she told him that she was asleep on the couch at the time, that way she wouldn't get grounded or get in trouble. So we said our long goodbyes, and I went home. Later that evening, he calls me up, and asks me if it was true that she was asleep, and the he was playing nintendo at the time. I said "yes" thinking it was the best thing to say, but forgetting that we weren't supposed to even hold hands in their vicinity, he blew up. I have never heard him so mad ever. Not even during one of his mood swings. He told me he does not want to ever catch me around her again, how could I have done that after he told us not to, and that if I had been there he would have tore my head off and killed me, and that if he finds out we see each other anytime soon before he cools off, he will call the cops and send me to jail, and have a pleasant evening, and hung up. Pleasant Evening? It was the most terrible thing that could happen to me. I dropped the phone and ran out of the house and ran for 2 minutes, until I stopped and sat down and cried for a good five minutes. Then I just sat there and thought... I'm never going to see her again. I'm not going to be able to move in with her. When my parents move, I have to go with them. I cannot support myself enough to stay in this town[12], and that I had lost her forever. My whole life, everything I had ever wanted, had just been taken from me, because I gave my girlfriend a love-bite. It's not like we had sex or anything.. I have been trying to keep myself from thinking about this as much as possible. I haven't slept more than 10 hours in the last 3 days, and I have been trying to keep myself occupied as much as possible. I know the minute I start to come out of the shock of it all, I will never stop crying. I am dwelling on one thign though, the worst thing I did in front of the kids, was give her that, and they were not even looking in our direction. Yet they are always watching him when he's groping her, and he says he does not tolerate that kind of stuff in his house, when he's doing it himself? And I'm the one who will go to court, and get thrown in jail for dating a minor. How do people justify this kind of a thing? I know what everybody is thinking, these things happen, and I will get over it. I don't know how.. I love her more than a person probably should love someone, and I would never be happy with someone else. We used to say "After all, it's only 2 years til she turns 18.." But now, I may not even see her til then. And will she still be there when that time comes? She will proably call every Tuesday until summer vacation starts in a couple of weeks. Her parents should be at work, and her little tattletale sibblings should be at school and the baby-sitters. But if we get caught.. we will never hear from each other again. And I have to face the fact, that this is all my fault, and there is nothing I can do. FOOTNOTES: ---------------------------------------------- [1] Don't tell me. I would hate to think there could possibly be something worse than this. ---- [2] Yes, I know this is currently illegal in most places in this country, but you cannot help who you fall in love with. Why would you want to? She is a very nice girl, The girl next-door type (she actually lived next-door to me when we met and fell in love) she did used to smoke but I made her quit. She has never done anything like the other kids today do. She is very submissive to her parents, which I guess is why she's pretty much in control of most things in our relationship (like the remote etc..) I let her keep it that way. She loves me so much. I never thought someone could love me (or anyone else) they way she loves me. She once set the stove on fire (by accident) and started crying. I asked her why, she told me it was becuase she didn't want to get grounded from me. Not because he would probably beat her when he got home or that her mother was yelling at her and taking all her stuff away, but because she would not get to see me. ---- [3] They treat her like their own personal slave. She has to clean the kitchen, living room, the outside porch, her room, the bath room, scrub the floors, cook dinner and take care of a 11 month old little girl, while watching a 4 year old boy, every day. The litte girl thinks my girlfriend is her mother, because she spends more time with her than her mother does. ---- [4] Being her mother, stepfather and her 10 year old arrogant brother. Her mother made an agreement with her when they moved into the new house, that she would take care of the kitchen and cook dinner and all my girlfriend had to do was watch the baby when they were not home, and take care of her room. Yet her it is 9 months later, and her mother sleeps in til noon everyday, goes to work at a her job from 1:30 to 10:30 every night, with 2-4 days off a week (in which she still does nothing.) and she sits on the couch asking "where is my lighter?" "get me the phone book" and always getting pissed when my girlfriend cannot find the items (always 2 feet away from her mother) or do the little things reqeusted (that can OBVIOUSLY be done by her mother.) then grounding her for a week, because she's had a bad day. On the rare occasion my girl does manage to get everything clean, the 10 and 4 year old come in and mess up everything again 5 minutes later, and she has to start over, and then she gets yelled at becuase "she didn't do anything? Oh yeah? then why is everything still a mess?" She never has time for homework, and they often make her stay home from school to clean the house, and they wonder why she has bad grades? ---- [5] I used to spend the night on weekends, but they took that away from us because she spent too much time with me and never got her chores done. ---- [6] Though everytime she doesn't manage to clean everything, or she gets a bad grade, he threatens to have me thrown in jail. ---- [7] Probably so I will go away, and they can have their slave again. ---- [8] They are not bad at all. People always say I am lucky to have nice parents. ( I have never been told this, but I think they also think I am lucky to have BOTH my parents. Everybody else I have ever known has had a step parent, including my Brother and Sister. ) ---- [9] Who are not able to console me anyway. And just make things worse by saying "I know how you feel." ---- [10] They say "there's a time and a place to things" and we used to argue they never gave us that, but we've managed to find tuesdays. ---- [11] A virtual Record for us. ---- [12] I'm in college but have no college degrees yet, which any job that pays well enough for me to support myself requires. %e *EOA*