So these kids are crazy.
The other night I woke up at 1am. I went downstairs to get a drink of water. I noticed before heading downstairs that the door to the boys’ room, which is directly across from mine, was empty and the light was on. They seem to not realize that there is an energy crisis in the world. It simply doesn’t exist in this place. I turned off the light and noticed the light was on in the older girls’ room as well. I looked in and the 13y/o, I’ll call her Flower, was watching a movie on her tablet. We exchange pleasantries and I head downstairs.
I arrive to see the 13 y/o boy (he shall not receive a name till one of these stories focuses on him) but the 16 y/o, I’ll call him Flags (he is in the Winter Guard at school and spins a flag a lot), is not there. 13 is doing what he does, playing X-Box online with his friend Care Bear. (His name isn’t important to the story. I just like calling him that without him knowing.) I ask where Flag is and he tells me that he just went upstairs. I tell him that he wasn’t up there and I am assured I am mistaken. I fill my glass (who am I trying to kid; it is a plastic “commemorative” cup from the Arizona Cardinals) and head back upstairs. I look in the boys’ room again to be sure I am not wrong and I ask Flower where her brother is. She tells me he just went downstairs. I feel like I am being punked and almost ignore the entire thing and go to bed. Unfortunately I don’t.
I go back down and tell 13 his brother has disappeared again, this has happened before, and he needs to help me find him. Flag now sticks his head out of the younger girls’ room, which is on the first floor, and tells me he is there. I ask why he is in the 7 year old’s room and he tells me Flower needs a charger for her tablet and he is looking for it. I tell him that neither of the 7 y/o have a tablet and to get out of their room and go to bed. I tell all of them to stop all their garbage and go to bed and I head upstairs in a somewhat annoyed state. I sit and take a drink of the now not as cold as I want it water and realize there is a huge issue. Three of the kids received tablets for Christmas. All 3 have them removed when this happened because of one issue or the other. No one should have a tablet in the entire house except Frenulum and me. Shenanigans are happening and I will get to the bottom of it…first thing in the morning and I go to sleep.
I wake at 5:30 as is customary and I go down to get a bowl of cereal. I bring it with me and I wake Flower and Flag and I get them out in the hallway. I ask them for the tablet so I can see whose they are using and who is getting their life changed by a new and unusual punishment. I am told that it has been returned to Frenulum’s car. They opened her car, retrieved the tablet, used it till just before I woke up and then returned it to her car. I ask who took it and Flag says Flower did it. She proceeds to tell me he took it the night before and she took it last night. I tell her to go get it and wake Frenulum. “Baby, wake up. You are gonna want to hear this”, is the way it began. I will not go into too great detail because quite honestly I am still pretty mad and disappointed in the entire situation. I will list a few key points that spring to mind lest you, the Saga faithful say “Steve, we all did this type of stuff. Judge not lest you be judged”. Trust and believe we never did some of this stuff. The technology simply didn’t exist.
• They each had created Facebook accounts. They had reached out to their parents, birth parents that have had their parental rights severed by the state, and added them as friends on Facebook. More on that later.
• One of them had created accounts on both Chatroulette and Chaturbate. For the uninitiated amongst you those are websites where people can chat and masturbate via webcam. All perfectly acceptable for 13 and 16 year olds. Both claim the accounts were not theirs but I assured them that Verizon did not pre-load that software on all tablets they sold, so one or both were lying.
• Flower, being a master criminal, had created an online persona for herself where she was a 24 year old recent ASU graduate and an aspiring model in the Arizona area. She used this profile to create an account on a secret shopper website where she would review stores, both brick and mortar and on-line, for points. Those points would then be converted to credits to use on Amazon.com to purchase things she didn’t want purchased on the family Amazon Prime account like leggings, yoga pants and make up. I assume most of those were for the above mentioned website interactions, but I am only guessing.
• When confronted with this, Flower dropped the dime on Flags for receiving a gift from their birth mother. She also decided to dime out another of the kids, not mentioned above, for also receiving a gift from their birth mother. She explained that the gifts had been retrieved from the mailbox and hidden from Frenulum and the rest of the family. Master criminals indeed. On a side note if you decide to do a crime and are looking for accomplices, a crew as it were, avoid these children. They will turn on each other faster than the clown posse in the opening sequence of The Dark Knight. “No, I’m supposed to kill the bus driver”indeed. Muwhahahahahahahahaha.
• They each had multiple email accounts as well as profiles on every single form of social media you can imagine. If they spent one iota of the timedoing nefarious stuff on their school work they would all be on the honor roll instead of repeating grades and failing classes.
• A video I can only assume was sent via one of the above site was also found on this tablet. It had a gentleman rubbing oil on himself rhythmically at the start and ended with him urinating into his own mouth. I am not going to be a hypocrite and say I have never viewed adult erotica, but the operative word is adult. And Top Top Bottom aside, I have never partaken in anything related to scat or urine. How is any of that a turn on? As Ralph Garmin from the podcast Hollywood Babylon is known to say “What the serious fuck people”?
I would like to say that if I was a kid in today’s society, these would be just the smallest percentage of twisted activities I would have partaken in…unless there was the slightest chance my mother would have found any of it. Disappointing my mom was the worst punishment I could possibly receive. Ever.
I would like to end on a high note. The same weekend this happened one of the 7 year old girls was helping me build a bookcase. She asked me if I was ok with her calling me something other than Steve. I said sure, but asked what she might want to call me. She got real quiet and asked if she could call me dad. She said she wished I was around all the time. I told her that I lived there now, so she got her wish. She explained she meant when she was younger and walked over and gave me a big hug. My cold heart melted and I swear I rolled tears. I told her I would be happy for her to call me that but that she should talk to her mom first to be sure it was ok with her. That conversation happened, but to date she has not called me dad. I know I will cry like a newborn baby when that happens. ‘Til then I am simply Steve.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.