House of Zathras

What is Nuosu Day? ‘Nut Up or Shut Up’.

Goob (and his girly-friend) did show up for Thanksgiving. He didn’t tell us she would be coming…just showed up. But both of them swore up and down that Goob would be back that night after he took girly home so he could get up early with BR to go take care of some legal stuff. He hadn’t been home at all in the previous five or six days.

So…did he come home? No.

Did he call that night? No.

Did he show up early the next morning? No.

Did he call that morning? Yes…around 9:00. Saying he was pulling into town, and asked his Dad if he wanted something from McDonald’s. And then didn’t show up for two hours after that. With the girly-friend.

Sick of the lies and the unashamedly self-serving behavior, BR had packed up all of Goob’s belongings and had them in his car. Goob has been wearing his uniform the whole time he’s been here…wearing it to impress people, and apparently getting free meals at times. But all his other clothes, his orders, and assorted other belongings were piled on a bedroom floor, literally scattered to all four corners. BR got it packed up and took it to work. When Goob finally showed up, BR demanded the keys to the car (which technically Goob had paid for, but never bothered to get the title put in his name…it’s still in my m-i-l’s estate), and demanded the keys to our house. BR told Goob that he’s dishonoring this girl, dishonoring the family, dishonoring his uniform, and dishonoring himself.

Goob thinks it’s about the girlfriend…nope. It’s about Goob, and his selfish behavior. We didn’t demand he spend all his leave time with us. He only spent a few hours with us the day he got here, stayed one night after that, and the rest of the time he was gone, with nary a call…but with lies that he’d be home. The car he used has literally been driven to pieces. There’s now a hole in the muffler, the brakes are warped or something, and it handles like a piece of shit.

And Goob still thinks we’re mad about his girlfriend…a victim of sexual abuse herself in the past. So neither of them really has what it takes to help the other. And we told them both that. But it was the lies and disrespect of the family that brought things to a confrontation. Goob just doesn’t get it.

He did call me from Atlanta (he left this morning…I did ask him if I could bring his brother Buck to say goodbye…Goob even tried to wriggle out of that. He still had girly-friend with him, wearing the same clothes BR had seen her in the day before when BR appropriated the car.) I asked him if he wanted to talk to Dad. He said something to the effect of ‘maybe…if not, oh well…if we don’t talk again, oh well’. I told Goob that would be his choice, not his Dad’s. That Dad loved him and is the one person he can count on to support him and help him when he really needed it, but he wouldn’t enable Goob to be stupid. I also asked Goob what had he expected of us this week. What had he wanted us to do and act like? He had no answer to that. Because he had wanted Dad to let him use grandma’s house, for a free place to fuck his girlfriend. That’s when it really went downhill…when Goob was told ‘no’, and he went off and pouted the rest of the week.

So, Friday was ‘Nuosu’ Day. Goob has to act like a man to be treated like a man. That realization has not hit him yet. It was a very hard thing for BR to do…knowing Goob is going off anywhere from one to three years overseas…but anything else would be approving Goob’s behavior.

And we couldn’t do that. There’s a younger brother watching him and idolizing him. Buck can’t see that using people is okay. And we couldn’t do that to Goob himself. Enabling his behavior won’t help him. As I said the other day, ‘what we permit, we promote’. We can’t permit self-serving idiocy.

So yesterday and today have been pretty crappy. And some asshole rear-ended me on my way to the airport (no damage, thank God), and then proceeded to call me a fucking bitch and a stupid example to my son Buck. FML. But I think the 67-year old driver was just pissed that I had Buck take a picture of his license plate while we exchanged information. I wasn’t taking any chances. And then the cops came, and the asshole stomped off like a little boy. While I was shaken up, both physically from the accident and emotionally from the barrage of verbal abuse and hand-gestures, I had a revelation. If BR hadn’t done what he did, that asshole could be what Goob will be in 40 years. A bitter older man, blaming everybody else for his mistakes.

As hard as it was, BR did the right thing. Nuosu Day has come. Let’s see if a man comes home from Korea.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Angst (mine, kids', whoever wants it, come and get it), kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.