It's sometimes said, 'Never let a Good Deed go unpunished' and I'm thinking that I must be a good example of that old saying inasmuch as here I am some years after the 'good deed event' and, in my mind, still paying the price for helping somebody out. The ironic thing is that I can't even remember the name of the person who I 'helped' in the first place.
It was back in the last century and I was an only child who grew up in Boston suburb with my mother who had a husband (aka, my father) who was some 20 years older than her. I guess I wasn't too much aware of the age difference at the time given that he was a stern and distant father figure who mostly left any parenting to my mother who I loved dearly. My relationship to my father was something else and can best be described as whenever he was around, I tried to keep out of his way as it seemed to me that he was programmed to making my life as unpleasant as possible.
I never did consider if he loved or even liked my mother but such concerns became unnecessary when suddenly, just about the time I began High School, he died.
His passing was met with mixed emotions but for me it was an event which thereafter lifted the air of gloom from our family dynamic; I no longer had to worry if I had somehow offended him and, if I had (or not) suffer the consequences of his bad temper.
However, whilst I had reasons to celebrate, I did come to understand that it presented another unpleasant situation given that my mother discovered when his affairs were being sorted out that he had spent and squandered any savings that she thought they had, including what was laughingly referred to as my 'college fund'. The impact of that discovery was no longer did I have the comfort of a 'stay-at-home Mom' to greet me when I got home from school as she had to get a fulltime job and if that job offered overtime, then so be it, she took it and so I was often left to my own devices which for a teenager was a recipe for trouble.
My mother's name was Ruth. She must have been in her late 30s when my father died but whatever her age I will always remember her as being mature, conventional, yet feminine and lovely. She dressed stylishly, conservatively but in my mind she fitted the description of truly being a MILF. She was a little over 5 feet tall, slim with auburn hair alabaster skin and blue eyes and lovely breasts; I used to fantasise over those breasts with the thought that there must have been a time when she suckled me. There was no internet in those days but I didn't need it for she wasn't at all shy about letting me see her when she got dressed or undressed and, unbeknown to her, it was almost like she was giving me a private sex-ed lesson when she was around. She certainly gave me plenty of other things to fantasise about without the help of the internet.
However, what was endemic in those days was what would now be called 'social segregation' or some phrase like that. Like it or not there was systematic racial separation and the suburb where I grew up and went to school, although at that age I was unaware, there were very few people around who were not white. Negroes, as 'people of colour' were then called, were certainly a minority and this clearly did not sit well with the progressive aims of the government of the day. As a consequence of their radical thinking, positive measures were legislated to right what was seen as a wrong and much to the outrage of the majority of the population a system of 'school bussing' was introduced whereby Black public school students were being bussed out of their black neighbourhoods to public schools in 'our' predominantly white areas. There were protests made at this imposition with dire warnings that this bussing was guaranteed to bring trouble and although these predictions failed to come about in the general sense, for me it was true and this is where my story really starts.
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The forced integration of these black students was a revelation. Previously to their arrival in my school I'd never had anything to do with kids other than those of my own colour and background so (and I'm not saying this from any prejudice point of view) I had a degree of fascination and curiosity that led me to discover not only were these new kids nothing like I had been told to expect but in fact were 'cool' and a lot less buttoned-up than my upbringing had taught me. Indeed, I had no problem at all with what bussing had introduced and I soon became friends with a lot of the black guys.
Not so a lot of my white school buddies, they maintained the racial attitudes of their families and kept their distance which actually created another problem for them and, ultimately, a bigger problem for me.
We high school kids were of an age when drugs became a part of our scene. Not hard stuff like Heroin or Cocaine (leastways, I didn't see it) but the soft kind, weed. It was regarded as acceptable and the height of cool to smoke a joint but for the white kids there was always that problem of supply and where to get it. Cue, my friendship with the black kids who seemed to have no such problems.
I'm a bit hazy how it came about but due to my easy relationship with the black kids I soon found myself being the middle man, a go-between, connecting those who had the weed and those who wanted it, aka, the black kids and the white kids. I didn't consider myself as being a drug dealer, per se, but rather as an entrepreneur who had found a way of earning a little extra cash given that I added a few dollars to any transaction. Where's the harm, I thought. I'm earning money to help out my widowed mother; nobody gets hurt, indeed, everyone gets well and the racial status quo is maintained.
The authorities didn't see it that way and I guess in hindsight I should have been more discrete and little less cocky about my own status as a drug supplier. Long story short, one particular transaction did not go well and when parents and the school got involved and it was discovered I was the guy who had, in their words, 'been peddling drugs', the full force of the law was directed my way with the result that my high school days were over and I was sentenced to six months in juvenile detention with a further 18 months suspended.
My mother was devastated and I have no doubts that those 6 months must have been harder for her to bear than it was for me who was actually doing the time but somehow the months passed by and I was released back into her care for the remaining period of my suspended sentence but 'with conditions' for the future. Those conditions were that I continue to live at home for the next 18 months and that a probation officer would be appointed to check and make certain that this measure was maintained and to provide 'assistance' and guidance to make me a model citizen.
