Chapter 3 - The Tweenage Years

The continued Journey of John

 Chapter 3 - The Tweenage Years

 As John was getting older and had finally reached the age of ten.  He didn’t know why being in double digits was considered cool but he would take it.  His friend Thad had cousins that would come to visit occasionally.  These were two girls, one a year older, her name was Sara, and Sally who was a year younger than John.  They had visited many times and were part of the group when they were around.  This is when John’s sister would join with the group because she enjoyed playing with the girls.  Most of the other girls in the neighborhood were either older or younger.  Most other times the sister was off with other friends so it was odd to have her around.  Thad’s cousins would be part of John’s life off and one for the next dozen years.  Sara shared a close friendship with John even though the rest of the group was unaware.  The Sally was friends with John’s sister and when the cousins came around the Sally would normally spend the night with the sister.  Usually when this happened Greg would beg to spend the night with John.  Greg had a crush Sally and used John as a way of getting close to her.  John felt out of place when this happened so he always hated to have Greg and the Sally over at the same time.  One night when Sally was spending the night with the sister and Greg was there Greg snuck out of John’s room and was gone for a long time.  When he came back John asked him where he went and Greg said that he just went to the bathroom.  John knew this was a lie and because of that it was the last night Greg was invited to spend the night at John’s home.

Year eleven was a very troublous year for John. This was the year that poor choices and decisions would start to have a very negative impact for John. Over the past couple of years of John’s life, the mother had earned visitation rights to see John and the sister. During these visits, John was reunited with his brother who had been an idol of John’s since an early age. The brother was everything John was not. The bother was very outgoing and confident which appealed to John because he wanted to be these things. The brother was not afraid to break the rules and could usually find a way to talk himself out of trouble for breaking the rules. The mother showered John and the sister with enticements to get them to leave the father and move in with her. This was appealing to John because all the rules he had to follow at home were not existent in his mother’s home. Things like TV and radio, which were not allowed most of the time at John’s home, were always on at the mothers. So the pull to live with the mother was increasing on every visit.

 Secretly the father was snooping around the mother’s home looking for evidence to revoke her visitation rights. He knew that the mother was trying to entice the kids and he was trying to stop her any way he could. The mother found out about all his snooping which led the mother to move out of the state for a time. She moved to Maryland. The visitation was still intact even after the mother moved. So the first part of the summer that year John went to Maryland to visit. He flew on a plane with his sister alone. This was his first plane flight and he was basically taking it alone. The father walked John and his sister to the gate and waited with them until it was time to board the plane. This was before security checkpoints and when anyone could walk to the gate to see you off. The flight was uneventful except for the sister crying. John did the best he could to console her. The mother met them at the gate as they deplaned.

The only thing John learned from this visit with his mother was that delivering newspapers is hard work. He spent the entire time during the visit helping to deliver newspapers to retail stores. Not even proper time for TV in the evening because he was so tired he passed out early every night. This trip made John think twice about moving in with his mother. That message was received loud and clear when he asked to go home early. John was not a fan of doing the work for his mother and her husband. It was fun the first day because he was sitting in the back of an empty van as they drove around. Half the time the side door was open so they could get in and out very quickly. Another day they were in the back of a pickup truck as it was going from place to place. It was exciting at first to be unbuckled and sliding around at the van and truck made turn after turn. Things you could not get away with today but was common place at the time. After the first day the novelty of this wore off and it turned into long days of working.

During this time the father had lost the chance to revoke the visitation rights to the mother. The father was stuck trying to keep John happy without stooping to the level the mother was. He decided to take the kids to Six Flags for a day of amusement park fun. The day before going John was outside with his sister and found a very jagged rock on their way home from Greg’s home. As they approached the house he saw the next-door neighbor’s car in the driveway. For a reason he couldn’t ever really explain he threw the rock at the back windshield and the glass shattered. John didn’t know what to expect to happen but it certainly wasn’t that. The kids bolted home but not before they had been seen. James locked himself in his room and would not open the door again that night. Needless to say, the Six Flags trip was off and John spend the next week either in his room or completing chores inside and outside of the house. This was a warning sign for attention that went unnoticed.  

The mother moved back to the area late in the summer and continued with the visitations. She then resumed her verbal, freedom of choice, and gift assault on John to talk him into switching sides. The mother treated this as a war that she was bound and determined to win. Oddly enough she did not have any interest in the daughter at this point but was putting all her focus on John. On one visit John was allowed to watch a couple of scary movies, Gremlins and Critters. While he thought this was a good idea at the time, he realized it was a mistake. At bed time, it turned out that scary movies caused John to have nightmares. The father was not happy with the nightmares, mostly because it was causing him to lose sleep. There was no recourse except to ask the mother not to let him watch those kind of movies anymore. The mother was unhappy that John had nightmares and the father could use this as ammunition against her. She took this feeling of unhappiness out on John by leaving him home during the next visitation while his sister and brother went to Six Flags. This was the second time this year that John had missed out on Six Flags and he wasn’t happy.

Author's Note

Any feedback is welcomed