Sunday, January 16, 2011

इ अल्रेअद्य लूकेद अत माय फोरेहेअद एंड आईटी दोएसं'टी हवे सुक्कर व्रित्तें ओं आईटी

why did the title turn to Arabic characters? Gotta holla at blogger. The title is: I Already Looked At My Forehead and It Doesn't Have Sucker Written On It


So I have a friend named Jerry. Let me give you a lil background on Jerry. Jerry is the type of dude who has a heart of gold but makes decisions that aren't in his best interest. I guess basically he's still not mature and handling this being grown thing all that well yet. To help contextualize my questioning of his decision-making ability, I'll provide a couple examples. One time, instead of paying his rent, he decided to take his money and rent out a club to throw himself a birthday party. He bought himself a new suit and was buying drinks for people too. I didn't attend the event because I was like um, Jerry, this is stupid. Just get some people to meet you at the club. You can still buy drinks and have a good time. Why waste your check on renting the space. Well anyway, soon after this he lost his apartment, in part because he was unable to make up the money to get himself back on track. You think my assessment was still a lil hasty? Ok...try this one. So he had a good 9 - 5 making decent money. He decided he didn't like that job any more and decided to quit. He quit and began looking for another gig. (Already you should see one of the irresponsible things he did). He found another job relatively quickly so things seemed to settle down for him a bit then. During this time he also moved into a room in a woman's home. He and this woman are COMPLETE opposites. He's a young black dude full of energy and she's a older while lady who's very comfortable with her consistent routines. At this other job he began to get into it with his supervisor about his performance or lack thereof and his attitude. I'll fast forward to the pink slip. Then he got on unemployment.

All the while he's on unemployment he's struggling to pay 700 per month to his landlord. No reason, in my view, that he should have been struggling. The 700 covered rent and utilities. The only other bills he would've had to contend with are cell phone and food. I should not that he was receiving in excess of 1800 per month in unemployment.

By now I hope I have justified my opinion. I could give you more but I think those examples are sufficient. So yeah, before Christmas he called me while I was in Target to ask me if I could loan him some money to go home for Christmas. I told him no. I did tell him though that if he needed a ride from the bus station once he returned to DC he could ask me. On a whim I decided to hit him up earlier this week just to check to see that he returned safely and whatnot. Mind you the call in Target was so random because I had stopped accepting his calls and would not communicate with him for about 4-5 months. There is only so much Jerry I can stand. Like the reason I keep him around is because I absolutely do not understand his logic and it is fascinating to me sometimes to hear his absurd stories and listen to his antics. On this call he tells me that he's still looking for a job, his unemployment is running out, (Wasn't is extended like 3 times), he hasn't had a haircut in several months, he's personal training now and one of his clients paid for his LSAT test.

See how much that was? And that's the abridged version. Take a second and re-read all his claims. Okay now, let's move on. So somewhere in there he slipped in that he needed 20 to get a haircut. I was feeling a lil bad for him so I said that I could spare it. My thinking skills didn't kick in until we had disconnected the call. He's what came to mind. If you just went home for 2 weeks, why didn't you get a haircut then? I'm sure mama, sister, brother, cousin or step-half uncle would've seen to it that you got a haircut, given your situation. Secondly, if you're personal training people, I don't think I'd let you train me looking crazy if you haven't had a cut in months. And if you are training people then why wouldn't you take some of those ends and get a haircut? Another thought, if you had to borrow money from people (another mutual friend) to get home, why didn't you just stay here and get a haircut and realize that going home is a luxury that you cannot afford at this time? I guess that would've been too adult.

I decided to not give him the money for the aforementioned reasons. Thoughts?

4 comments:

Rich Fitzgerald said...

I certainly don't disagree with you.

Hard knocks will grow him up or nothing will.

Anonymous said...

I need Jerry to get his life together. ASAP. You were right in not enabling that behavior any longer.

Jerry needs to put his big boy draws on and start making better decisions. Instead of giving him the money for his haircut, simply pointing out what he should/could have done better is worth far more.

JayBee said...

@rich: thanks for weighing in. i hope this approach works to a better degree than what i've tried before.

@theweight: i so didn't wanna continue being an enabler. i decided to have a conversation with him, explain my decision, and help him start mapping out a turn around plan.

Unknown said...

What, did read right, the end of #13-you know who I am and what I mean.