Letters to the Editor
-
What can this song mean?
As a pre-teen, I was introspective and shy. I loved books, music, film. One day, I left a movie singing a song I'd heard--"it's a cold, cruel world, and I'm off to see the circus, gonna be a broken-hearted clown." Suddenly, I actually heard the lyrics I was singing and I immediately stopped walking. I was baffled. What could that person mean to sing that the world was cold and cruel? There was nothing cold or cruel about the world I lived in. Why would anyone write a song like that?
I treasure that memory. Wasn't I lucky to feel perplexed about those lyrics? No doubt, there are plenty children today who would understand those words instantly. But in the late 50s, living in a suburb, those words were nonsense. Innocense was my point of view.
Years later in college, upon reading Hobbes' description of life as nasty, brutish, and short, I could only nod tiredly in agreement and underline it, writing "Yes!" in the margin.
If her kids are that well-raised and lead lives of "meaning and purpose," then she can't be doing too badly.
-
The kid's being a little creep -- seriously
First the boy goes to an anti-drug event and comes home with a button proclaiming himself drug-free. That's cool. And he sincerely thinks being drug-free is the best way to live. That's also just fine.
Now he wants to imposes his new-found belief system on mommy. He thinks it's for the best.
So the mom respects her son's viewpoint and tries to become more discreet. She enjoys her one vice (from the sound of it, her only vice) and maintains it out of the view of her children.
THEN, HER SON FINDS HER PIPE UNDER THE LAUNDRY...
....and all hell breaks loose! Mommy is a drug user! Oh noes! The sky is falling! My world is imploding! Mommy alters her consciousness! This must be stopped! Mommy is wrong! I am right! I am 15 years old and I know what's best for mommy!
Give me a break. The boy should never have been allowed to get this far in dictating what mommy must or must not do. The father and mother should have told him it's none of his business what mother does as long as it does not negatively impact her ability to function in the family. From the sound of things, she was doing fine.
Sure, mommy isn't setting the greatest example. But she also apparently not abusive, she is discreet, and she's functional. It sounds like she's a loving mother who cares about her son's opinion. But it also sounds like she refuses to cave in to his demands. That's because she's an adult who gets to make her own decisions.
This kid needs to go get a little armband and wear it around the house. He sounds like Bobby in the "Brady Bunch" episode where he becomes the hall monitor and becomes drunk with rule-enforcing power.
If the mom were an alcoholic, or crackhead, or meth user, or heroin junkie, or cocaine snorter, or any other drugs with proven life-ruining effects then I would be completely, 100% behind the kid. I'd also think the father was a jackass for putting up with it.
But pot....how often do you hear of pot causing anything terrible to happen? Is mommy glassy eyed and acting like an idiot all the time? Okay, then I'm on the kid's side. Or is she just a little mellow? Does she "wake and bake" and spend 15 minutes coughing up residue every morning? Or is she just a casual, if regular, user? What's the problem here?
As usual, Cary comes out against the mother. In another recent column he equated moms to con-men. Now this. Cary, would you mind disclosing your own problems with your mother? Because you obviously have a bias here.
-
The Weasleys?
The son's name isn't Percy, is it?
-
I don't even get high and I'm not getting this.
There's a lot of presumption on Cary's part that Mom is pretty much lost to Kid, but I re-read the letter and nowhere do I see any evidence of that.
Actually, all I'm seeing from the letter is a mom who has a successful marriage, successful kids, and nice life in the suburbs, and a son who, for his own indeterminate reasons, is trying to convert her into a non-pot smoking mom. (Hmmm, sounds just like every other co-dependent relationship I've ever heard of.)
So am I missing something? To me it all just sounds like some big tug-of-war control issue going on at home. Maybe what this is really about, is that the kid with all his DARE programming is, at bottom, scared to death mom's going to get busted, and THAT would be the loss of Mom. It would be a pretty legitimate fear, unfortunately.
When it comes down to it, as regards morals, lying, weaknesses of all kinds, pretty much every parent alive is a Big Dopey Hypocrite, one way or another. One of the most painful parts of growing up (and it can take till well past middle age, or even not happen at all), is to accept it and love Mom and Dad anyway.
Hate to say it, but if Mom on pot is the biggest problem in this family, they're kind of lucky.
-
Another thing here
The LW, by her own self description she's been both widowed and divorced, works, and has no kids, yet she is interfering in her "friends" family life. She states mom never had a career because she never had to, SHE had a successful husband whom she's been married to for 20 years, seems mom's got a couple points on the "friend" already, the LW proceeds to enable the son in a quest to control his mother. The LW mentions the mom's back problems as a "complication" and also brings up that years ago mom followed the Grateful Dead in a negative manner. In short it could well be "friend" is jealous and resentful of the comparatively easy life mom has had.ly so, maybe mom's best course of action would be to put friend out of her and her families life or at the very least distance her, sure friend will say it's addiction but really who cares she is exacerbating the problem.