DON'T BE A JERK

Back in 2009, I told you about how my son had come to me, and asked if he and his girlfriend, Maddie, could come over and set up a little love nest in my middle room, because he was living with his mother, and she wasn’t going along with his romantic pursuits happening under her roof.

I told him that was fine with me, but that he and I needed to get my apartment cleaned up a bit first, that it really wasn’t presentable in its current state.
So that night I’m sitting there watching TV, and there is a knock at the door, and its Maddie. She has brooms and mops, spray bottles and towels, and we set to cleaning my apartment, including getting the middle room set up as some kind of honeymoon suite for them. She really is a swell girl, and we went shopping and bought groceries, and I made a little cheese and fruit tray for them to have the next evening when they were together. It was all very sweet, ya know?

So they would come over a few times a week for about a month, and then they stopped. A week or two went by, no lovers setting up in my middle room.The next time I saw the Rip (my son) I asked him about where they had been.
He says “Oh, that’s done”
“Done?’ I ask ‘Whats that mean, “done””
“Done” is his one word answer.
So I say:
“Don’t just say “done” boy, like you finished changing the oil, or finished up a deadline. Say “she broke my heart”, or “We split up” or “Oh, it just didn’t work out”. Give it the respect it deserves. Don’t be a jerk. We are talking about a nice soft sweet woman here, not a steak dinner. Don't say "Done". Please don’t be a jerk.”

So the Rip, here a few years later, he’s watched me fall in love with this woman the last two years.

Back at Christmas, he came over to where I was living, and had dinner, and she came over too. We had  a nice dinner, and she left, and later he asked me “Pops, what are you doing with her?”
And I told him “You know I love her to death. I really do. I'm flat crazy about her." 
And I went on to try to explain what I thought the relationship was about, and what I thought I was trying to do.

 “I can see that. But Pops, you are too sensitive a guy for all that” he says.

“After everything I been through, what do you think she could do to me?” I said.

And he just shook his head.

So I been finding out the last few months what she could do to me. Love just goes its own way, and you can try to control your feelings, and keep your heart safe, but maybe for guys like me it just don’t work that way, and at some point loving a girl can take root in your heart, like a Tanglewood tree, and it grows into something that's too big, too wild, too deep-rooted and its huge and hungry like a crow in the corn, and one day they come and tell you you need to cut it down, you need to cut it down for your own good, and you know if it comes to that, them telling you to cut it down, then they are probably right. They must be right. They must be right or they wouldn’t be telling you, would they? But you have no idea how to cut it down, this thing you been watching and growing and loving all this time. Its been out of your control the whole time anyway, and you are just now finding THAT out.

Anyway, I’m talking to the Rip about it last week, and I remember what he said back at Christmas about me being “too sensitive a guy for that” and I asked him how he knew back then. How did he know I was too sensitive?

He says “Because I’m just like you Pops.”

“What do you mean?” I says.

“Well, I have these girls that come to me, and they want to have sex with me; they are nice and soft and smell so good and they look at me with those big caring eyes and I fall in love with them. And then they break my heart.”

I’ve never been so proud of him all my life.

My boy, he’s not a jerk after all.