I want stories of lunatic neighbors

Yeah that whole system is messed up. My wife did volunteer work for awhile for the state foster system where she would check-in on and advocate for children in the foster care system during legal proceedings. A lot of her stories about what she saw in those 2 years are really messed up and she had to step away from it. There really needs to be an overhaul on the whole thing.

 

Totally all of this re the adoption process, I was a child of adoption and fortunately placed quickly in the home that became my real family. I"ve heard stories more recently about the process and it's sad, in a word

 

my wife, her parents had several foster kids, adopted 6 others and has several other who choose to not be adopted. there is a ton of expenses. for a very short time after I was married to my wife we were respite providers. so basically we gave weekends and quick coverage for kids, or family's who has issues or say a child was taken by DHS for many reasons and needed a place to stay for a night or even a weekend or something like that. one night got a call from the agency we were aligned with. placed a kid in our care the caseworker came over and talked to us for a bit told us to lock the doors and set the alarm they knew we had because they child had tried to run away before to get back to a mother. fast forward 2 night later kid seems pretty chill, very much asking if he can play his xbox and I tell the kid we didn't get his Xbox, but that we could do other stuff like play a board game or some legos, you know just stuff we could do together to interact and keep the kids mind going before bed time. anyway off handily kid says "grandma told me i cant play my Xbox and I hurt her, and ill do that again." kid flat out looking me in the eye. I said something along the lines of, well I get that you were probably just mad or frustrated, and didn't mean to do something like that.

kid ends up in bed like 9ish if I remember correctly. still complaining about the Xbox and how as soon as he gets home he will play it, and how I should get him one. fast forward hours later I get several motion alerts on the alarm, I've got a couple dogs so not super outside of the normal. but the alerts are hallway outside of the kids "room" and one in my kitchen. figured kids thirsty or something don't think much of it. but I'm semi awake. anyway, I hear my Lab Mastiff, mix get up off the floor and start moving towards the door, assume the kid needs something or scared whatever. I hear my door open super slowly. and see the outline of the kid, wonder if he is going to say anything. kid comes in. I see something in his hand, my dog at the edge of the door gives off a soft alerting bark, which for him means something is off he wasn't the dog to bark unless things weren't cool. but figure its that he isn't comfortable with the kid yet. I sit up and say the kids name, he starts walking super fast into my room, I remember saying what's in your hand. its a pair of kitchen scissors. he starts to raise them above his head and I can here it even to this day in my head. " I told you I'm going to play my Xbox, and if you don't let me ill do to you what I did to my grandma. my 120lb dog slams into this kid knocking him a bit off, giving me enough time to remove the scissors from his hand, so I tell my wife to wake up and call the emergency/ afterhours line, for the caseworker. after a few min on the phone she says they are on the way. local PD show up, caseworker show up. so I mention to the caseworker and the PD the kids mention of hurting his grandmother. report is written up. kids taken to another facility or home whatever the protocol is. fast forward a couple days later we get a call for the meet up with the caseworker and they always had a psychologist along in situations if we needed any moments to talk things out. come to find out kid was brought to us after spending the night in a pediatric Behavioral Health facility for stabbing his grandmother in the head with a kitchen knife. and caseworker had not disclosed that to us. that was one of the last times we took someone in sadly. but also could have ended far worse. and my big old dog probably saved my life.

some kids in the system are a mess. some adults are a mess. sometimes the system makes bringing home a kid who deserves a good home absolutely harder then is needed. or not financially feasible. hell I know a family who had two first nations girls who had been in their care for 4 years and were going to adopt, and as soon as their "home" reservation head that they pulled them saying they needed to be with their own people. really messed my family up raised those girls from 1-5, and 2-6 but i know still that family feels like their daughters were torn away from them.

 

Because they are lesbian. If it was a straight couple that would be no go.

 

Those kids are now mules

 

Back in my day, being a veteran used to get some extra points added on. My how things have changed.

 

That one kinda baffles me . . .
How can you not have some respect for veterans??

 

I can shed some light on that but a lot of people aren't gonna like it.

 

Yeah, that question is an invitation to cross the 30-day danger line.

Historically speaking, for a while it was an expectation to serve. Those who didn't were looked upon like there was something wrong with them. Then counter-culture happened as a response to serving an unpopular interest, and yadda yadda over a few decades... people tend to dig heels and double down on opinions to the point where they no longer see people as people.

And that's as close as I want to get on a public conversation.

 

My wife and I have been considering adopting, your post is making me change my mind.

 

Yea I prefer not
I can imagine

I got a large # of family that are Veterans
I have zero tolerance for disrespecting them ... and the people that choose to do so

 

Any time I hear someone bad mouthing them, I just think "could you do that"
The answer is invariably no
Freedom isn't free

/theend

 

For me, any person that volunteered years of their life towards an act of public service...deserves respect for that act. It doesnt matter whether I agree or not with how that public service was managed, they went and served. That's enough to say thank you.

 

Please understand I'm saying this as someone who has spent 2 years of my life in Afghanistan with one of those years having almost daily IDF (self-admitting POG). I've also spent the last 15 years working in an industry that, by its nature, involves working with and for veterans. 99% of veterans are cool, are great to work and hang out with. But there's that 1% that make their service their entire identity. Which if you did 10+ years or did some really specialized stuff that not everyone gets to do then cool, it makes sense. But in my experience it's very rarely those guys that do it. Most of those guys will talk about it if it comes up but don't find a way to steer any and every conversation to their service. Some of them won't talk about it at all even if it does come up. Those are the ones you gotta check in on every once in a while.

It seems like the guys that base their entire identity on it are the ones who did the minimum service in some administrative MOS and then spend the rest of their life trying to get every single freebie/special treatment they can out of it.

"Yeah I was doing 60 in a school zone but I'm a vet so I shouldn't get a ticket."

"Yeah I beat my kid to the point that they needed to be hospitalized but I'm a vet."

And my personal favorite that I've heard too many times to count:
"I was in the military, I shouldn't have to do the range safety brief."
"Well it's required by our insurance company so everyone has to do it. Just out of curiosity though what was your MOS? 27A? Cool so you went to the range once a year and most likely never deployed."

But when the guy who spent 10 years in SOF and currently owns a training center that's highly regarded by tactical teams around the world came to renew his CHCL guess who didn't complain one bit about the range safety brief and sat quietly and nodded. (Then got a perfect score.)

Unfortunately it's the 1% who drag down the reputation of the whole. And most of the time the 99% are cringing at the 1%.

The counterculture that thinks everyone in the military is a trained baby killer is an aspect too but I don't see much, if any, of that in my area of the country.

Edit: Apologies to any 27As. I used that example because last time I went to JAG the person who helped me had their qual target proudly hanging in their office and it was NOT a target I would have wanted anyone else to see. Multiple MOSs are guilty of my example above.

 

Only takes one apple to to ruin the barrel.

 

you know, ive been around lots of foster kids in my life. worked with kids and teens for years. lots of times they are good kids. lots of them just need some attention, and some love. and someone whos not going to just throw them back when things get rough. ive know many families who have had really amazing kids who had a bit of a rocky kick off point. and find somewhere that is willing to tell you a childs past and background.

 

A few years ago I was out walking my dog (16 year old black lab) with my wife and 3 year old daughter early in the morning. It was his last day with us as he couldn’t move and quality of life was deteriorating by the day. We had someone scheduled to come to the house later that morning to put him down. So we wanted to give him one last walk.

I had this dog since he was a puppy. To say he meant a lot is an understatement. We were out walking him without a leash because we didn’t have one anymore as he couldn’t walk very far. Should he have been on a leash yeah but anyone with two brain cells could see this dog was non threatening and he wasn’t ever far enough away from us that he couldn’t be under control.


We’re minding our own business when this guy jogging by goes out his his way after the dog paid him no attention to say hey you know he’s supposed to be on a Leash.
I go yeah sorry we don’t have one he can barely walk. Then the dude doubles down and says hey do you know how many times I’ve almost been bit by a dog?
So I replied something along the lines of

No I don’t man, look I’m sorry I don’t have him on a leash. It’s his last day with us and he’s getting put down in a few hours can you just not be an asshole right now.

Dude proceeded to say he’s going to go get his phone to call the police so I’m like yeah cool go ahead I’ll pay the ticket I don’t care. He comes back 5 minutes later ( we’ve probably walked 100’ since we’re just letting the dog smell everything he wanted to) and starts filming us with his phone.

cops never showed up and I ended up carrying the dog home

 

I had to reposition my cameras, because one of my neighbors was putting her trash in my trashcan.

In the People’s Republic of California where I live, you get a tiny black landfill garbage can, and a big blue recycling can and big green yard can, if you need more room for your landfill trash you have to pay a LOT of money for a bigger trashcan.

Only about half of my neighbors do it, the other half try to stuff their shit into a small trashcan or put their trash into other people’s trash cans.

Which means that unless I want to have bags of garbage laying around my house, I have to find out who did it.

So one morning I see a blue Prius pull up in front of my house and a woman with a Karen haircut putting bags of trash in my garbage can. I didn’t have camera evidence, so I repositioned my front door cameras and caught her doing it three weeks in a row afterwards.

This is after I’ve already driven to the dump to get rid of my household trash because if you leave the trashcan overflowing the truck operator may or may not pick it up.

I go and confront her with the video, and she just flips out saying that she wasn’t herself that morning, she never does it, they had a party last night, she didn’t know that the big garbage cans cost a shit ton of money. I then show her video of her doing it the week before, and the week before and she says that’s clearly not her, even though it’s her car and her dumbass haircut and why am I freaking out about trash.

I politely remind her that because of her I’ve had to make trips to the dump because there’s not enough room in the garbage can, that I paid extra for, for my own trash.

She then suddenly switches gears and tells me that she is a social worker and works to help underprivileged people and can’t afford to pay for a bigger garbage can. She lives in a $2 million home and there is a brand new Mercedes EV parked in front of her house.

I once again tell her that I don’t give a shit about her personal situation, or whether she can remember what she does, just to stop putting her fucking garbage in my fucking garbage can.

So after our chat, it seems to be that she stopped putting garbage in my garbage can, but a few weeks later I was talking to one of my neighbors, and he asked me if he noticed if my garbage can has been full of other people’s trash if I left it out the night before garbage day…

 

Can't like this post. I am so sorry. In my experience, assholes are over-represented among joggers and bicyclists.

 

I had a coworker who served in Vietnam, and we only knew that because another manager mentioned it and then immediately asked us to not approach him about it. If conversation drifted to anything even remotely resembling military, he would quietly and politely find something to do in another room.


During my applications to various schools, I also once met a retired rear admiral. I don't know if it was his age that made him give no fucks or if he was always like that, but he and I had a very lengthy discussion where he told his WWII stories, and he did not hold back. He talked about standing on deck during Guadalcanal and hearing the voices of those treading water at night. He said the ship orders were "ahead full unless you hear someone call for help in English." He also talked in detail about the aftermath of taking a torpedo.


Honestly, I don't know which of those two people I find more harrowing.