Thursday, August 30, 2012

Lost in translation....

Yesterday an old loveable came to visit.

I love it when they stop by and tell me how things are going.

This particular young woman was quite a hot mess when she was in my class...she's still in our program, just not in my part, so lots of time passes between our visits.

I'm always surprised (sometimes delighted even) by her metamorphosis.

She's lost a lot of weight, and while she used to be a chubby girl that hid her confidence under roomy tee shirts today she displays lots of it, most of it in the form of gush-y cleavage oozing from the inside of a too tight, cherry red colored tank top.

(Concerning her confidence and oozing boobage...this is my observation, not my personal belief.)

I listen to the stories about how much she's changed.

How things have improved.

She dates a guy from our program. He is one of my favorite loveables of all time. A young man I'd let Googie date if she were younger, single and interested in teenage hoods.

Her dad hates the kid.

"If he were white" she tells me "my dad would be okay with him".

Her dad tries to bribe her to dump him. Offering her clothes and drivers education and all kinds of high dollar things if she will.

She tells me how wonderful her boyfriend is and that to her he is worth giving up everything for.

I think of Daddio and me when we were that age.

Daddio was worth giving up things for....

And I loved him enough to go to teen/parent war any day.

Thankfully, there were no wars to fight, nothing for him to prove.

They liked and trusted him. And he would have (like Dr Laura likes to say) swam through shark infested waters to bring me a lemonade.

My young friend tells me that her guy, the love of her life, recently moved from the state.

He's in another town looking for work and a new place to hopefully lay roots.

I ask her if she's going to join him there.

She nods her head, and her eyes sparkle when she gushes "yes, as soon as I can".

"I'm going to get a job and we are going to make a life for ourselves, a better life than we had here. I won't have to listen to my dad and we can be together with no problems. I love his family so much" she says "his mother is the best cook ever, they had me over for the holidays and I didn't want to leave" she continued.

I work while we talk. She chatters on about this boy and her days in my program.

She thanks me for "teaching her to cook so many things" and tells me that she has no mother to teach her those things and that she appreciates how much she learned.

She offers to help me finish up with some dishes I'm washing.

I take her up on it.

We laugh when she asks me if I remember how much she used to fight me about doing dishes.

I tell her that she doesn't stand out much in that department as none of the kids like to do dishes.

A staff member comes in and he and I talk a minute, the girl steps out of the kitchen.

When she comes back in, she's holding her phone.

She pulls the phone away from her ear and tells me that she called her boyfriend and he wants to talk to me.

I'm thrilled to talk to him, it's been a couple of years since our last conversation.

I question him about his life and I'm happy to hear him say that he's doing well.

Working hard and making a new life for himself.

I ask him about the girl and his plans for her to join him.

He hesitates, then says "I have no plans for her to join me".

I glance up to see an ear to ear smile, she's nodding her head up and down.

"I can't wait to go be with him" she says when I hang up the phone.

"You have any backup plans?" I ask, already knowing the answer.


4 comments:

  1. Oh that poor girl :( so very sad for her....she is going to be crushed.

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  2. Jessi... it is heartbreaking. Sometimes so much so my heart aches and I wonder just how dumb we girls/women can be..kwim?

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  3. Corey, she has hearts in her eyes, and is probably one of the most fragile loveables I've ever had.

    "Crushed" may be an underestimation.

    Thanks for the comment!!!

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete

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