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It's a small world after all
by chuck woolery at 11:14 PM on April 15, 2004
As many of you may have noted, many of my entries are about the more sordid aspects of some people's lives and how I interact with that.
Earlier this week I had occasion to run into a situation that combined my personal life and a drug addicts life that I found rather ... different.
First a little background...
My best friend, for many years now, is a fellow named Sean. Sean was my roomate through much of my university education. We keep in touch, despite living in different cities, and meet / do things together on a fairly regular basis.
Sean's father (61 years old) is Bob (Robert). To my knowledge Bob is still married to and living with his wife, Sean's mom.
Terri-lee (22) is a local drug addict here in my small city. A couple of years ago (April 2002) she robbed a gas station with a syringe filled with blood. Told the clerk that he really didn't want to be stuck with the needle etc. Wanted money for drugs of course.
Because Terri-lee is a druggie, she convinced the judge that sentenced her that she should be a given a lenient sentence where she stays under community supervision (as opposed to in a jail cell) so that she can try and get off drugs. Sure, sure.
Anyway, Terri-lee has been consistently breaching the conditions of her sentence over the last couple years, and since the spring of 2003, I've been trying to get her locked up for the remainder of her sentence. She's basically been on the lam since last June, when she showed up at the treatment centre she was in high as a kite (probably on morphine, her preferred drug). She got kicked out of her treatment program, and had a older gentleman by the name of "bob" come and pick her up there.
From there she failed to turn herself in, and she's been gone, gone, gone.
Anyway, we finally caught up to her a week or so ago, and she's been sitting in cells since then, all 87 lbs of her (normal weight 115). Looks like a white version of one of those people of the infomercials for starving people in Africa. Eek.
So I dealt with Terri-lee in court Wednesday, and lo and behold who's there, but Bob, my friend's dad. Seems that he's been "involved" with Terri-lee, (and her family) for quite some time now. Helping her out etc. Not too specific as to what "involved" means... Pretty sure that he's the guy who picked her up from rehab last june too. Neither confirmed nor denied...
Then I looked at her original order from April 2002. It includes a condition that she's to have no contact with Bob, so he's been involved with her since before then...
The best part is that Terri-lee told her lawyer that she thinks she's pregnant, and if she is, that it's Bob's. Of course she's probably just ignorant to the fact that if a woman drops under a certain body fat percentage, that her menstrual cycle shuts down, mimicking the early stages of pregnancy. I would think (and hope) its just that.
The world is too small.
P.S. I'll try and find some more upbeat things to put into posts for some of the future, as I realize that much of what I post is thinly disguised black humour.
comments (13)
Congrats, that is the most f'ed up thing I've heard in a long while. Just when you think you can't be shocked anymore...
by mg at April 15, 2004 11:32 PM
I like your black humour. But have you broached this topic with Sean? Like, dude, your dad's banging an 87 pound wretch who is probably a host to diseases that haven't even been invented yet?
by anna at April 16, 2004 7:53 AM
Oh yeah, I talked to Sean about it.
I called him and told him I saw his dad in court, coming to support a girl. When I told Sean Terri-Lee's name, he said something to the effect of
"ah crap, he's still messed up with that druggie?"
I'm going to visit him this weekend, so I may have a addendum to the story after that.
by chuckwoolery at April 16, 2004 10:54 AM
I don't get it... What does 'BOB' do for a living? Is he a Public Defender? Man, being assistant DA is like trying to stop a tidal wave flood with a bucket.
by LOCKHEED at April 16, 2004 1:15 PM
P.S. Chuck Woolery Doing His Job. Respect. Much Respect.
by lOCK at April 16, 2004 1:20 PM
Bob, last I heard, works as a technician / office worker in the oilfield up here. Definitely not a lawyer. No professional connection to the court system or junkies generally.
My gut tells me that he is exploiting / feeding this junkie's habit in return for favours, etc...
Incidently, I have no illusions about my ability to stop the tidal wave etc. Mainly with Junkies (the young ones at least) all you can do is lock them up for long enough that they decide that they want to clean their lives up.
The whole theory of the basis of criminal law, and what its philisophical underpinning is, is quite unsatifying generally...
by chuckwoolery at April 16, 2004 3:33 PM
well, and i say this with all due respect, it beats sucking cock for a living.
by lajoie at April 16, 2004 5:57 PM
Not to mention soaking corks. That skit on SNL slayed me. It's great when the guest host can't spit our her lines for laughing. "How long have you been sucking, er, saoaking, er, soaking corks?"
by anna at April 16, 2004 6:33 PM
Chuck, you have even shocked MG. That is a truly crazy story. Is this the same Sean you mention in Linz's post?
by jean at April 17, 2004 4:26 PM
Yeah, it’s a small world. I know I’ve had experiences like that – well, not that fucked up – but none come to mind right now. All I can think of is small town crap I had to deal with while in high school, living with my parents. I’d have complete strangers come up to me and ask me if I were Skip’s son. If I said “yes” I’d usually get comments like, “Dude, that cocksucker gave me a DUI last week. Now I have to go to court.” What do you say to that? After a while I just denied being his kid.
by MrBlank at April 17, 2004 10:41 PM
Yeah, that's the same Sean as mentioned in Linz's post.
I talked to him about the Druggie over the weekend. Apparently his dad has been messed up with her since she was 18 (4 years or so). Seems like Sean is about ready to write off his dad as an idiot.
Lajoie, don't get me wrong, I love my job. I just don't think I'll be saving the world anytime soon...
by chuck woolery at April 18, 2004 10:28 PM
Since she was 18? Wow. Unbelievable. I'm sorry for Sean. Poor guy.
by jean at April 19, 2004 12:16 AM
The government's diabolical War on Drugs has turned what once was an individual problem into a social problem by inventing new make-believe "crimes'' that aggress against no one, while spawning a whole true crime industry associated with it (just like during Prohibition). The effect of libertarian legalization would be to make drugs an individual problem again instead of the grave social problem that it is today. As they say, we don't have a drug problem, we have a drug-problem problem. Were it not for the government's War on Drugs, the gang turf-wars, theft, and other various true crimes that are associated with the distribution of drugs and the procurement of money in which to support habituations to drugs--of which the price has been artificially inflated--would not exist.
How many liquor stores have shootouts between each other? Yet when alcohol was illegal the black-market distributors of alcohol found it necessary to have shootouts and murders between each other on a regular basis. This was because, being that their business was illegal, they did not have access to the courts in which to settle their disputes; as well, because their business was illegal, this raised the stakes of doing business, for if they got caught then they would go to prison--thus it became profitable to resort to murder in order to solve problems which would otherwise lead to prison. And how many tobacco smokers resort to theft and prostitution in order to support their habit? Yet studies have shown that tobacco is more habit forming than heroin. The reason you don't see tobacco smokers doing such things is because tobacco addicts can afford to support their habit. When Russia experienced an artificial shortage of cigarettes over a decade ago due to its socialist economy, tobacco smokers took to the streets en masse rioting--requiring emergency shipments of Marlboros and other cigarette brands from the U.S. in order for it to cease. If heroin or crack were legal it would cost no more (and probably less) than a tobacco habit, and so heroin and crack addicts would be able to support their habit by working at a regular job instead of resorting to theft or prostitution. If one should doubt this last statement, it should be borne in mind that the original laws in the U.S. against the use of opium were to punish the Chinese opium-smoking immigrants in the early 1900s, who were so productive that they were taking railway construction jobs away from white Americans.
by Jamie Michelle at December 4, 2005 11:16 AM