I am touching on an old subject again, in light of new information. I got the news that my son had been arrested for possession of marijuana and corruption of minors. This was all in the same incident and seemed more bullshit than anything else, but what can you do?
He was playing hacky sack with a group of friends around 1130pm in a shopping center parking lot and a cop rolled in to check ID’s. There is an 11pm curfew for those under 18, which was everyone there but my son. He was just 18. And he got patted down and they found a baggy.
no get out jail free card
So I’m thinking of my probation and community service and one of the tasks I had to do was split logs at this remote ecology learning center. There was a group of us and among the group were two young girls probably around 19 or 20 years old. They seemed pretty clueless and did just about no work. They looked at the community service as just a joke, but I think if they weren’t together they would have been up against a wall. (maybe literally) and scared. But with a friend by their side they were joking and having as much fun as you can in the snowy woods of Pennsyltucky.
It makes me wonder how my son will do with probation and all. It also makes me worry about all my kids as they grow up and make bad choices. (we all do) My oldest just got a dui a few months ago, so he’ll be going through all the stuff I did.
Those girls make me scared for my youngest daughter because she is very emotional and naive. She likes to pretend she’s worldly and happening, but she hasn’t had a huge life yet. I think she’d breakdown if she got in trouble.
checking in monthly with a parole officer was no big deal to me. They looked at me like someone who just made a mistake, but with attitude that could have been worse. I am a yes, ma’am, no ma’am kind of guy and after my first visit to the parole office I only had to phone in my parole visits. She knew I wasn’t going to run. I had a family and a stable job. But in those environments, the actual visit, you see the dregs of society. How do these people live?
During community service I heard guys bragging about being caught for their third or fourth dui. Or petty crime, or whatever. Bragging?!? And they thought they were the shit. These were guys who would get chewed up and spit out in a state prison and probably wouldn’t even fare well in a county lock-up. Pathetic losers who talked big about their run-ins with the law.
But there were also the other people, like me, or like the young guys who just wanted to do their service and get back to their real life. We’d do the brunt of the service while the assholes would stand around complaining about having to shovel snow, or clean up trash. It didn’t matter to me. don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Those losers were going to be caught again, and the next time they’d be doing time. it was a cycle for them. that’s all I don’t want for my kids. Make a mistake. Learn from it. Pay your penance and move on with your life.
The cost of parole was $50 per month. that’s 600 for the year. the fines for my DUI were minimal, but the court costs and lawyers fees ate your budget up. But the real cost is that your insurance is doubled in cost for ten years. I am pretty sure it also impacts job applications. The thing is that my court case was wiped from the records, yet the DOT still has me losing my license for thirty days for no apparent reason. It’s not hard to figure out why. The insurance companies know.
and then you have to stay clean for ten years. If you get caught doing anything else, those sealed records come back to life. Strangely enough a friend of mine got busted for pot a while ago. Really small amount, but he got tagged. They looked through his records and found something from thirty years prior. This shit never goes away.
