The Phone Rang

I have such a headache right now and probably shouldn't be writing anything, least of all what I'm about to write, but I've always been one who takes the good with the bad. Which isn't to say that anything you've previously read has been particularly good, just that this is particularly bad.

My older son was arrested yesterday. He was charged with aggravated harrassment (he threatened his ex-girlfriend and, for now, I'll leave it at that) and after a long day in arraignment court, was sent home on probation. He has a number of problems, some typical teenager stuff and some not so typical, so this didn't come as a total surprise. In fact, every time my phone rings, my heart jumps into my throat because this is what I dread and because I knew this was inevitable.

The detective handling the case was nice enough to let me bring my son down to the station early yesterday morning so he wouldn't have to spend the night in jail. Right before we walked inside, I put my arm around him and said that everything was gonna be all right, although that's not the way I felt. He just said, "I know."

Some other cop asked my son to take off his belt, necklace and ring and he casually handed these things to me like he was slipping off his backpack when he comes home from school. We hugged each other, bumped fists and I said I'd see him in court in a little while.

So I drove over to the courthouse and sat for hours, watching dozens of suspected criminals being arraigned, waiting for them to call my son's name. I actually did the same thing last week when I drove him to get his senior yearbook photo taken. He had blown it off three or four times and this was his last chance. He wore a new short-sleeved, white shirt and a thin silver tie that his younger brother had to tie for him, and his hair was a mess and he just looked like such a loser, like the kid in your yearbook that you make fun of 20 years later, and when they called his name it took everything in me not to burst into tears. When they finally called his name yesterday, I no longer felt like crying.