Lobster walkin’

Lobster’s been gone... six weeks as of tomorrow. No, he hasn’t tried coming back, and he pretty well burned his bridges anyway, but you hear stuff. A brief summary of his life on his own might be in order... a cautionary tale for any of you who are teenagers and are thinking you’d be better off dropping out and running off.

One thing Lobster seemed to have picked up on that The Boy hasn’t, despite repeated advice: don’t jump until you know where you’re going to land. He may have already had it planned to move to Big V’s (Mrs. Fetched’s younger sister, not exactly the most stable isotope on the periodic table herself) before we booted him, because he was there by nightfall. The private school he was going to is run by a strange Pentecostal (but I repeat myself) church, and has some odd but sometimes flexible rules. The relevant one here is that students are required to live with their parents while they’re in school. They flexed the rules to allow Lobster to stay in school while he was living with us, perhaps because we also (at the time) had our kids in the same school. However, they didn’t know Big V — so given the choice between going back to his parents’ place or dropping out, Lobster chose the latter. Hey, he had a roof over his head (although he told Mrs. Fetched even that wasn’t important), a job, and a truck. What more could he ask for?

I suppose he could have asked for some financial savvy. After wrecking his truck to the tune of $1100 for body work (and that after the mechanic cut him a break), he made a deal with a devil, aka Big V. He gave her the title to the truck and agreed to pay both rent and payments on the truck; she paid for the repairs and he got his (now hers, actually) truck back. Big V and her husband run a lawn-care business, so there was plenty of work available for Lobster on days he wasn’t working at KFC.

Sounds all well and good, except that Lobster seems to think:

a) the universe was created to wait on him hand and foot;
b) getting up early is for other people;
c) paying bills is for other people.

After about a week, he told them he didn’t have to get out of bed and work with them. They got him up, ungently, and he decided right then and there he wanted to leave. They helped him load up his truck and off he went. It wasn’t too long before he was staying in town with a co-worker. This was a useful arrangement for both of them; he needed a place to stay and she needed transportation.

Somewhere along the line, he got a girlfriend... and knocked her up. Oh thrill oh joy. He hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what that means.

When the universe revolves around you, keeping up payments on a truck is a minor annoyance. If you want to splash out for a hot date, or controlled substances (when you’re under 21, alcohol is a controlled substance too), or yet another traffic ticket, or nice clothes... well, why not? Paying people what you owe them is optional, right? It can wait.

Maybe it can, but Big V doesn’t. One might think she would be a little more sympathetic, having been on the other side of vehicle repos at least twice, but when it comes to what is due her, or what she thinks is due her (i.e. not the whole world, but a large portion of it), she can get as evil and heartless as any banker. After a couple of attempts, she blocked Lobster in good and had his truck towed away. (Yes, he deserved it. No, I don’t feel much/any sympathy for him. I’m just saying Big V doesn’t have a lot of room to talk in this arena.)

So Lobster now has: a job at KFC, no way to get to it, a pregnant girlfriend, and a few bags of clothes. Having repo’ed his truck, Big V is legally obligated to give him the difference between the value of the truck and what he owes her for it (I would say about $1000, maybe a tad more), but selective memory may need to be refreshed. I’m not sure I’m going to be the one to do it. But in any case, Lobster is really close to hitting Rock Bottom. I wonder how long it will take him to come to his senses; probably not any time this year.

It would be hilarious, if there wasn’t a baby involved.