Thursday, November 13, 2008
A helping hand?
Every one who followed this blog for a while is familiar with the story of the "Family" where members of the local blog sphere came together to help the poor family who were on the verge of losing everything.
A free education was donated to the mother as a dental hygienist, and a good paying job was simply waiting on the final state exam for dental assistant, which the mother passed all of the practice written and practical exams with all aces...
Lo and Behold, the day of the final state exam, which was less strenuous than the practice tests, she dropped out of the class, the reason, things were busy with her job as taxi driver...
A little later on my wife and I had learned, to our disgust, the money raised to help cover rent and deposits, utilities, and groceries were completely wasted on booze and cigarettes for the parents, and reportedly a substantial portion of clothing for the 3 children were returned to the stores either for cash, or if the stores offered in store credit and sold cigarettes and booze, the clothing changed from coats and jackets to Marlboro's and Miller Lite. (not even good beer!)
Today to my surprise, the front page of the evening news is a sprawling picture of the mom, seated outside the emergency shelter in Jeffersonville, talking about how she is going to continue feeding and sheltering her children if the emergency shelter goes under at the end of the year as predicted. A horrible situation for the children to be in, and yet, there she is, smoking a cigarette while wondering how to feed and clothe her children...
HELLO!! WHAT ABOUT THE FREE EDUCATION YOU PISSED AWAY AND THE JOB THAT WAS WAITING ON YOU WITH FULL BENEFITS, GOOD PAY, AND A FUTURE?
Listen, my attentive audience of 4 or 5 readers, I have been around the block a time or two. Worked 8 years as a reserve police officer in New Albany sometimes putting in 40 hours a week on top of a regular job, I have worked EMS, both public and in private injury prone industries, and have been chin deep in social work for nearly 10 years now, and I have NEVER seen anything that sickens me more than this story.
To see them on the front page of the paper, outside the emergency shelter, talking about the trials and tribulations of have to feed and provide shelter for the children, but making damn sure you have a cigarette hanging out of your mouth!
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4 comments:
The attempt to help, by you and others, was genuine. While your disgust is understandable, think about the karma, grace, call it what you will, that you earned. You did the right thing. The recipients didn't.
I willingly donate my karma to those poor freaking kids and what their POS parents are teaching them.
Sickening.
Johns right though Chris, you, we, did good.
What we did, we did for the children. In retrospect, after the anger has faded, even if those children were happy for just that christmas morning, then it was all worth it...
I think this time around, I will work on a family at the clinic that I KNOW are trying the best they can...
Unfortunately this account only enforces the pre holiday funk I've slipped into earlier than usual this year. That being my beleif that "NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED!"
However Chris is correct in his assesment that if those kids saw some other way of living for even a few hours on Christmas Day, the effort was not wasted.
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