There comes a time in one’s life when you have to hunker down and start taking responsibility for your life and your choices therein, as well as get a handle on your future. Afterall, you can’t stay in the bachelor mindset your whole life, can you? This chapter involves expansion.
See, towards the end of my previous marriage I decided to get neutered, thinking that I’d only have 1 offspring that I know of and that’s it. However, I didn’t plan on divorcing that gal and later meeting an incredibly amazing woman who also was unable to have offspring, do to natural selection, as it would seem. So, it was discussed that perhaps having more little apes running around would be a good idea. But how to go about that?
So it was written, so was it done.
Since neither of us were physically able to reproduce our own spawn, we decided to try our hands at foster care. So entered the chaos.
We had numerous hoops to jump through just to become certified and “trusted” to even be able to house creature not of our making. But after months of classes and certifications, the day arrived and with it the sedentary and normalized life parted ways with us, forever.
The arrival of 3 boys was an eye-opener to say the least. See we already had 1 child, my daughter, from my previous marriage. We now went from 1 to 4 overnight.
My wife was far more prepared than I for this adventure, having years of experience over myself with troubled youngsters in a therapeutic environment. I was but a noob and was, in no way, prepared for this chapter. These 3 boys were all very sweet and meant well, but they came touting a rather unfortunate upbringing; an upbringing that wrought havoc, chaos, and misfortune in their young lives.
One day we decided, foolishly so, that a trip to Las Vegas was going to go over swimmingly. Little did we know that this trip would be forged in misadventure.
On the way to Vegas, we stopped at a gas station for the relief of several bladders. After all, little bladders need many stops. At one point, one of the boys said he was tired and decided to lay down on the filthy gas station bathroom floor. He didn’t know what touches said surface… I do. The inexperience of that kiddo was astounding. To this day, I don’t know how he didn’t manage to catch something from that act.
Fast forward to the next day, one of the 3 boys, after a hearty casino buffet meal (I say the word “meal” with extreme sarcasm), was met with food poisoning and coated himself, the back seat of the car, and eventually the ground with the contents of said ill-prepared buffet, via technicolor regurgitation. That was a joyous task of roadside clean-up.
Not long after that mess was eradicated, the youngest also must have been met with the same food poisoning and let out a near constant, deafening scream session that lasted nearly 4 straight hours! The decibels that youngster reached haunt my dreams to this day. They say a dog hears fireworks at around 190 decibels. This kid exceeded that by a landslide. Imagine having 2 sound systems in your car, one blasting Yoko Ono, and the other attacking your ears with the sounds of Mariah Carey, then having to drive for hours with the ever-present thoughts of hara-kiri subtly entering your war torn brain.
We eventually and wearily made it home safely. None the worse for wear. In time, those children were reunited with their parents and we moved onto another set
of kiddos, and with them new adventures.