It’s amazing how life can go from extreme highs to extreme lows in a week. He didn’t even bother to call me and let me know he made it to his mother’s home in one piece. Time to drown the bad thoughts.

… he’s gone. My son has decided he would rather live with his mother.

On Wednesday at my son’s school part of the day was treated as a Field Day. Basically this means the students were all dumped into the track/sports/P.E. area of the school and left to their own devices. A group of 10-15……let’s say “Black”…..students got together and attacked four……let’s say “white”…..kids. This group targeted one kid, moved to the next one, moved to the next one, moved to the next one, and then were finally stopped by the teachers. My son was one of the targeted kids. He’s ok and only has a bruise or two. These were quick hit and run attacks. The school called to tell me what happened and I went to the school to learn more.

Now my son doesn’t feel safe going to school tomorrow or Friday and I don’t blame him. How in the hell can you have a gang of kids roving and attacking other students like that. Where in the hell were the damn teachers? Can you guess what the school plans call for on Thursday and Friday? Field days!

Sadly not all of the kids that were attacked were willing to talk to the school officials about the situation because they are worried about retaliation. Some of the little thugs were hauled off but some weren’t because of kids afraid to name names.

What I want to do is swing by Lowe’s and pick up some chain my kid can use as a “belt” on Thursday and Friday but the law doesn’t think that is the right idea. Something about intentions and weapons. Ah well.

The original plan called for my ex-wife and I to split the cost of a new skateboard for my son’s birthday. Naturally he wasn’t interested in the el-cheapo models. Sadly he got in quite a bit of trouble a month before his birthday and the skateboard idea rolled away. I really wanted him to have the setup he asked for but I had to hold my ground as a father an keep the punishment in place.

When the birthday money started coming in from the family I realized he could afford to buy a decent skateboard if he only thought to use the money for that. Sure enough he put two and two together and realized all he needed was a ride to the skate shop. He asked and I drove. While he didn’t get the one he originally asked for he did get a decent board.

So, what did he get for his birthday? His step-mother and I went in together and bought him Rock Band for the PS2. I knew he would want us all to play together so we bought an extra guitar to go with it. The game is way more fun than I thought it would be. We’ve had a blast with it.

He also got one other thing. When we were coming home with his new board we were talking about what he needed to do to it so it was setup just how he likes. It turned out we didn’t have all of tools needed to assemble, disassemble and modify a skateboard so we stopped at Home Depot and I bought him his own tool set. I’m hoping the tool set will help teach him some responsibility. We’ll see.

At work and counting down. Only five more hours until I start a six day vacation. I’ve been asking my son where he would like to go for his birthday, what he would like to do, but he has’t come up with anything. His birthday is Saturday. Any suggestions?

Tuesday night the school bands put on the end of the year concert at my son’s school. Seeing as how he is the percussion section leader of the concert band the family went to the show. From the beginning band to the symphonic band all of the kids did a great job.

I know every parent that has a kid in a school band thinks “My kid has a future in music!” I’m no different and I ask you hear me out. My son needs to attend summer school if he plans to pass the seventh grade if we can get him in the program. It’s been a rough year for him. I don’t know if I wasn’t tough enough or if he doesn’t care enough. I know I can get through to him but it’s going to take time. So, what about the music? It’s the one class he excelled at. When he was with his mother for the first part of the school year he was kicking ass in the percussion section at his old school. When he moved in with me for the rest of the school year he kicked ass in the percussion section at his new school. He showed up half way through the school year and decided he wanted to lead the percussion section. He did! If only I could get him to apply himself that well to his other subjects. With his level of desire though, maybe there is a future in music for him.

I have a problem with my job. Yeah, like that’s a surprise. I really have found myself in an unpleasant situation though.

One of our clients is about to add pieces of wood from the RMS Titanic to the retail inventory. When ships arrived at the scene of the wreck there were pieces of wood from the Titanic floating in the water. Not only did these ships pick up the survivors they also picked up quite a bit of this wood. Small chips of this wood has been sold as souvenirs of the wreck. Now I am expected to sell some of those wood chips.

I don’t like this situation at all and have made this known to management. I didn’t go in with both guns blazing and raising hell when I expressed my opinion about this. I explained myself in a calm manner and asked that I be excused from having to sell these items. I first learned these items were being added to the inventory almost two weeks ago and I took almost two weeks to think about it and come to terms with how I feel about it. On Friday I made my opinion known and now I’m waiting for an answer. In today’s job market I’m taking a big chance making this stand.

Understand I don’t feel this way because the items come from the RMS Titanic. The items could come from any shipwreck where lives were lost. When a shipwreck takes lives with it I believe the final resting place of the ship becomes the final resting place of the people that died. To me this is a moral issue and one that I just can’t take lightly.

I used two examples in my presentation to management:

• If I purchased land and found that in the past it had been used as a burial site I wouldn’t tear it up and sell pieces of the items found there are souvenirs. I alluded to Native American burial mounds to make my point.
• I pointed out that this was a moral issue with me and compared it to asking somebody of a strong Christian faith to sell copies of Anton LeVay’s books.

We’ll see how this goes.

Say hello to Little Girl. We were going to play a game of “Return To Sender” but I decided to keep her.

I’m really sick of people standing near me in No Smoking areas while they smoke. Friday three women walked up next to me in a No Smoking area at work and lit up. I decided diplomacy wouldn’t be any fun so I farted instead. It was one of those really loud sulfer farts. The poor women couldn’t believe I would do something so disgusting. I just laughed and walked away so they could enjoy the fart without me.

I’m sitting in the breakroom at work and testing my Q Global. If you can read this then everything worked.