Phillip's excellent week

nospam@example.com (Annie Gabston-Howell) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:04:20 -0600

Sometimes the boy has a bit of trouble with truth. Sometimes his sister, Katie, allows herself to fall into his world. Or maybe I'm using too many words to say that children sometimes do amazingly stupid things.

Allan and I like to know the people our kids spend time with. We even-quite unreasonably if you ask any of the children--refuse to allow them to spend time with people we don't know well or disapprove of.

Phillip decided that he wanted to spend a week with his girlfriend. In order to do this, he had to spend a week in the home of the girlfriend's uncle in another county. We don't know the girlfriend or the uncle. Phillip, very wisely, decided that his best hope of getting to do what he wanted to do lay in successfully deceiving the dinosaurs that he lives with.

Katie and their mother assisted him. The story was that mommy was picking Phillip up for a visit. Mommy and Katie knew the actual plan. Mommy and Katie knew the potential Dalmer-uncle no better than we did, but trusted Phillip--at the ripe old age of fifteen--to make a good decision about the safety of this plan. I'm not terribly clear on exactly how well Phillip knew the uncle, but I'm pretty sure he'd talked to him on the phone at least once.

We found out that Phillip was not at his mother's home a full week after he left our home. We've spoken to him on the phone so we know that he is alive. He assures us that he did nothing to make us grandparents, that he did not partake of drugs or alcohol, or do anything that we would object to.

We assured him that, given his track record, his credibility isn't very high at the moment.

Where's Phillip right now? We aren't certain. His mommy said he was next door, Phillip called and claimed to be using a cell phone belonging to the neighbor across the street, but the area code was the same as the girl friend's. When the police went to mommy's house, no-one was home. A visit by the police to Gary McGrath and Kent Carter's house revealed that Phillip has never spent a single night there, even though--just this past Sunday--Gary was shocked to learn that Phillip had lied to us and spent a week in his home under false pretenses. He was so shocked--on Sunday--that he was never going to allow Phillip in his home again. He was extremely sorry about the whole thing. Tonight, talking to the police, Gary claimed that Phillip has come out to visit for no more than a couple of hours at a time, during the day only, and tonight Phillip is at Disneyland with Laura and is expected to be back at his mom's by midnight.

I do understand that children sometimes do amazingly stupid things. I don't understand the adults in this situation, though. Why would mommy assist in the lies? Why would Gary and his boyfriend remain involved after Sunday's revelations?

The mind boggles.

MEandering - Phillip

Phillip's excellent week