Special thanks on this one to Randi for all her help and expertise. She is truly knowledgeable and a pleasure to work with.
*****
A wise man once said, "Choose to surround yourself with people who want the best for you." I learned the hard way that these words couldn't be truer. It's easy to find friends who aren't good for you. The trick is to identify those people and try to keep your distance. It took a while for me to find people I could trust and who would put trust in me. Once you associate with good people and get used to that type of friendship, it gets easier to find what you're looking for.
I thought I had that, after a rocky start. Then shit happened. Mom tried to tell me. "Tom Dunne, you keep hanging with those sorry friends and someday you'll be in a jam you won't like." When she used both names, you knew she was dead serious.
My name's Tom Dunne, thirty-three years old, and in a very good place in my life. But it wasn't always that way, Mom had the hard job of raising me by herself after my dad died when I was twelve years old. As I look back, his death affected me in a terrible way. I lost interest in school. I started petty shoplifting and smoking cigarettes at a young age. We did just about anything you could do to get in trouble. I say we, because I started hanging with two other guys who were carbon copies of me. My mother was always working and trying to take care of my two little sisters. I'd like to say she neglected me, or was a bad parent, but that just wasn't true. She was busy, life as a single mother was hard and I was really sneaky. She did her best, but life dealt her a bad hand.
By the time I got to high school, it went to a whole new level. We were stealing from garages, stores, and even relatives if we could get away with it. Still smoking cigarettes, but now we added weed as much as we could, and we could a lot. We were high half of high school. I don't know how I graduated. They must have really wanted to get rid of me. I think one of my buddies never did graduate. It's hard to graduate from high school if you only show up about half the time. We didn't drink a lot of booze because it was harder to hide and took longer to get high.
We all knew about the different groups in high school. There were the jocks and cheerleaders, the smart kids that we called nerds, add in the goths, the goody two-shoes and the bullies, and you've got most of the high school stereotypes covered. We were none of those. We were best described as the punks. We were usually high, hated going to class or doing homework, plus the teachers and administrators couldn't stand us. The girls who hung around with us were just like us. They weren't very nice girls. All they wanted to do was get high and get in trouble with us. They also were very promiscuous. They would do anything for us if we asked. There were about ten of us in our group. There were about six guys and four girls. We all fed off each other and we brought everybody else down.
The lucky thing for me is that I never got caught doing anything really bad. That's not to say I didn't do anything; I just never got caught. A couple of my buddies did some juvenile detention, along with one of the girls. I also I never got anyone pregnant. That happened with a few of my friends. I was lucky.
After high school, I had no intention of going to college, or the grades, so I got a job stocking shelves at a grocery store. It was a third-shift job that actually fit in to my lifestyle. I was kind of used to being up all night and sleeping during the day, so the job was a good fit. I would work all night, then go home to eat and get high. After sleeping all day, I'd get up when most people were sitting down to dinner. I'd eat, play video games all night or have a girl over, then go to work around eleven in the evening. I'd do this five days a week, then on the weekends, I'd party as much as possible. My whole paycheck would go to booze, drugs and food. I was living in a dump of a house with three other guys and one girl. My life was going nowhere for about three years, and I was fine with it. That was until something happened that put a shock thru my system
I was working on a Wednesday night around twelve when it happened. The cops raided our house, and thank God I wasn't there. One of my roommates was stealing some expensive stuff out of warehouses and selling it on the street or online. I always wondered why he had more money than the rest of us. He had a decent car and his own laptop. He could buy stuff I could never afford. Another of my roommates was dealing in some nasty drugs. I bought weed from him from time to time, but had no idea he was selling some the hard stuff.
When the cops burst in, the thief had stuff in his trunk, his room and the attic of our house. The dealer had so many drugs under his bed and in his closet, he could have started his own pharmacy. The girl wasn't home, either. I think she spent the night at some dude's house. The other roommate was home, and even though he wasn't involved in any of their shit, he was still booked as an accomplice. All I had at the house was old clothes and video games. I never went back.
I was lost when I got off work that morning. I heard about the bust in the middle of the night from another friend. I didn't know how he heard about it, but I owed him a dept of gratitude for clueing me in. I left work completely lost. I had really hit rock bottom. I had no transportation, only the clothes on my back and about three hundred dollars in my checking account. On the plus side, I had a job, pretty good health, didn't have a police record, nobody was pregnant, so no kids, and I wasn't hooked on anything. That wasn't much of an upside for me. The worst thing was I didn't have real friends I could trust.
At that point in time, I felt as low as a person can feel. My self-esteem was gone and I had nowhere to go. I decided to go to a coffee shop and hang out for a few hours. All my life I was lazy, unappreciative and selfish. I knew I had to change because I had hit the bottom; there was no "down" from there. I needed help and advice. I had been nothing but trouble for my mother and had no real friends. I was too embarrassed to call my mom and ask for help. After sitting in that shop all morning consuming four cups of coffee, it finally dawned on me I had one person I could ask for help.
Since I was a child, especially after my dad died, I had one person I always admired. That was my grandfather: my mom's dad. I looked up to him. Even though I'm sure I was a source of worry, I knew I could count on him to give me some help. When I was a punk teenager, I always rejected his help and I was surely a big disappointment. As I got older, I realized what a support he and grandma were to my mom, especially financially. No matter how badly I acted, he always spoke to me with respect. I loved that. I didn't have any right to ask for my grandpa's help, but I was in a bad way, with nowhere else to turn. So, I did maybe the first smart thing in my life, and I picked up my phone and called for help.
"Grandpa," I said, "It's Tommy." He always called me Tommy.
"Hey, Tommy, how you doin?"
"Not so good, Grandpa," I said softly, "I've got problems and I don't know what to do?"
"Where are you, Tommy, I'm coming to pick you up."
"Thank you, Grandpa."
