Detrimental Assistance

Everybody needs help at one point or another right? You start off life as this confused deformed looking form of life, but now you’re no longer a fetus safe from the outside world anymore.  It’s time to start learning things on your own once you come out of that dark gaping hole crying, covered in blood, and other things you’d rather not think about. Of course you receive assistance while all this going on , much more than you will later in life (hopefully) because you are too young to fend for yourself and you’re probably about the size of  a large house cat at this point.

This is all perfectly acceptable right now. You can’t even lift more than a hair yet,  you have no idea what’s going on, people are constantly fussing at you, you can’t speak yet, and the only things you know how to do are things that are based off  instincts. If you take a shit, you can’t tell anybody you feel like you need to drop a deuce, you don’t know how to change your own disgusting piss and shit filled diaper, you can’t feed your hungry happy ass whenever you please, and so on. I’m sure you guys get the point now.

Life goes on , you grow into a young budding child (who’s still a little bratty snotty nosed shit), but you still get help from the people around you when you need it. There’s so much left to learn, and you can’t fit it all in that screaming hyper child sized head of yours. Many mistakes are made by you, but at this point it’s for the most part forgivable because you’re not ‘old enough to know better’ yet. Enough time goes by, and soon you learn  not to use your little smart mouth with your mother, lie about the fact that you just beat the shit out of your sibling (even though they are in tears on the ground beside you), or whine and bitch about a toy you weren’t bought at the store.

You also learn one very important concept of life. Showing up on time matters, and will matter much more when you get older. In order to do this ‘being on time’ thing you are also taught that getting a proper nights sleep is essential, because it usually allows you to wake up on time for any appointments, interviews, or important matters you may need to handle the next day in your adult life.

School bells ring in the morning to tell you school is starting, and you better get the fuck into the classroom.  There are also bells that ring to signify your next class is about to start, so you better hurry and end your conversation with your sticky, dirty, and dumb little friends about who has cooties and who doesn’t. Then there’s the lovely bells that ring to tell you that you’re late to class,  because somehow your dumb ass apparently hasn’t figured this out yet even though you’ve been in school for a few years now. This is supposed to condition you to learn to manage your time in order to be on time, appear reliable to your current teachers, and  appear professional to possible future bosses when you’re older.

When you’re still in these young years, you thankfully have your mother, father, maybe grandparents, or some family member/guardian who gives you a bedtime and expects you to follow it religiously. Some parents or guardians are better at reinforcing this than others, but for the most part most kids who don’t get into bed when told to can expect to see a belt or some other form of punishment coming for them. At least in our years this was true.  Now you can’t spank kids, so that creates a problem…no wonder they are all little shits, you can’t even so much as lay a hand on your kid to give them a high five anymore without someone jumping on you claiming you’re abusing the child. Anyway, that’s a different topic for another day.

Finally you hit your adult life, and hopefully you’ve learned how to set your alarm clock, wake yourself up, and drag yourself into whatever lame routine of life you may have set for yourself. Mommy is no longer waking you up saying, “It’s time for school sweetie, get the hell out of bed!” Mommy is no longer beating your ass when you refuse to get into bed the night before, and she’s no longer beating your ass for oversleeping in order to get you where you need to go on time. You’ve HOPEFULLY by this point trained yourself into being able to handle this basic part of life on your own. You can go to the bathroom on your own now, feed your own overweight hairy ass, dress yourself in your own horrendous outfits, and speak for yourself. Hopefully, at this point you aren’t crying for no apparent reason, crying to let people know you’re hungry, need to use the restroom, or need to play.

Here’s what inspired me to write this story. I love to help others, and I love to help my friends. However, I’m beginning to wonder if this is all getting to the point where it’s just detrimental to certain people in my life. I wouldn’t be overly concerned except for the fact that a majority of my friends are older than I am by several years, and I thought that with those years came something called “experience”. At least that’s what I was lead to believe…

I am finding it difficult to process that my 30 something year old friends can’t manage to get themselves up in time for work , or in some cases class (I know a few people going back to school). I often wake up to last minute text messages about how they woke up late and if there’s any way I could possibly give them a ride (I have a few friends who are unable to access cars at the moment as well). It doesn’t, or I should at least say it DIDN’T, used to bother me before because for the past 3 months I’ve been out of work with nothing better to do. In fact, I was the one who offered rides many times even though I know these people are fully capable of  finding ways to get themselves where they need to go as well as arriving there on time.  However, I’ve noticed a trend in some of these people becoming more and more reliant on me.

Maybe I’m weird, but I never found it difficult to get up and get to work or school on time. I follow a basic rule: If I have somewhere to be or someone to meet the next day, I go to bed at a time I know that I will be able to still make a timely appearance.  If I made the mistake of staying out too late and partying the night before, I mentally kick my ass into gear. Why doesn’t anybody else seem to have this in them?

What I guess I’m trying to really get at is the fact that I’m realizing my help seems to be more damaging than actually helpful. I seem to be sending these people straight back into reverse, and quite honestly I feel like a mother trying to wean my 30 something year old children off breastfeeding. They have teeth which really fucking hurt first of all, and don’t forget they can talk back in a way that doesn’t send me crying for my mommy, but rather trying to collect the bits of my brain they’ve exploded with their words as well.

It’s time to fly free birdies, I won’t be off work much longer, and if you don’t make it to where you’re going to be on time, I won’t be found anywhere within reach. I’ll most likely be stuck behind a register arguing with some numbnut about why the coupons they brought with them aren’t valid, because they refuse to read, and refuse to believe that coupons have dates, fine print, and restrictions.   No more help from me at the drop of a hat . It may be what I love to do , but I also hate hurting people, and in this sense I am hurting you by stifling the growth you apparently still have to do.  It’s time for me to move on, and all I can do is hope that you figure it out.