Parental Guidance

I've never wanted children. As a child, I wanted to play with Tonka Trucks in the sandbox, more than I wanted to play with dolls, and I was taking Martial Arts Training when a lot of my girlfriends were taking Babysitting Courses. From an early age I knew I wasn't going to be a mother, much to my own mother's chagrin.

Yet, here I find myself, in the Shit Hole at nearly twenty-seven years-old, with a nearly twenty year-old son.

My Problem Private. He's mouthy. He's insubordinate. He's disrespectful. He has no regard for rank or regulation. He has caused me nothing but headaches since he fell under my charge. And yet I find myself trying to guide him onto the straight and narrow, shielding him from harm, while still wanting to beat his ass. I finally know how my mother felt when I was in high school and became her Problem Child. I never gave her enough credit.

I am a firm believer that it is Nurture, not Nature, that shapes an individual. You are what you are taught to be -- or what you make yourself into. Having been spawned from a bad apple doesn't necessarily determine a rotten offspring. It is with this mindset that I know some people should have never tried their hand at parenting.

And thus I blame Problem Private's mother... for where else could he have learned such disdain for authority, than from the woman who introduced him to the world through experiences tainted with jail stints and crystal meth? Where else could he have learned to distrust, than from the woman who washed her hands of him when he was small, with lies as to where she was, and why she wasn't taking him home? Certainly not from the preacher who opened his home to his daughter's son and raised him to a man, but instead from the woman who was too much a child herself to raise her own son.

I could pity him. I could despise him. I could count him off as worthless, like so many others have done. Instead, I push him to be better, nag him into doing more, and corner him into doing what's right. Am I pushing him too hard? Not hard enough? And how do I not feel the sting when he looks at me with eyes full of unresolved hate, frustration, and teen-aged angst?

I never wanted children. And yet, here I find myself in the Shit Hole at nearly twenty-seven years old, being the closest thing to a mother my Problem Private has ever known -- and he thinks I'm just as stupid as I thought my parents were once upon a time. I guess life has come full-circle after all...