The Five Dollar Bill

the-five-dollar-bill-unrealized-plans-well-meaning-intentions
It was about 5 years ago today…  I was planning on leaving for what was going to be even BETTER than the last years “Dirty South Music Festival” event of 2002.  My girlfriend at the time and I were looking forward to it, we had the most INCREDIBLE time at the show the year before, it was a pivotal moment in our relationship…

 

 

I was at my Uncle’s Warehouse, talking to the guy running the place who was a friend of mine.  I was telling him all about the big show and how awesome it’s going to be, yadayadayada…

 

That’s when I got the phone call.

 

I tend to pace when I talk on the phone, it’s a habit that I just can’t seem to shake.  It’s like without the physical presence of someone there, I can’t stay focused on this tiny piece of plastic I’m holding against my face.

 

I would walk for HOURS without even realizing where I was going, just chatting away… especially to Mom.  It was quite habitual, we always had VERY lengthy conversations… she would let me talk and talk and talk and talk… 

 

I am a ramblin’ man…

 

On this particular occasion… things were FAR less jovial.

 

Mom had just moved into the infamous “House of “Midwest”” and my new step-father was acting very odd according to mom.  She had all these delusions…  she thought that there was a plot to KILL her between her husband and her father in law…  that they were going to drive her to suicide…  just like they did with my step-grandfathers wife.

 

Having known the in-law family as well as I did, I ultimately found the idea to be feasible in the sense that she was pitching it to me…

 

However…

 

Mom was heavily medicated throughout MOST of my life, and I knew that her shrink was feeding her a variety of pills… the one that stands out in my mind that caused her the most traumas was Xanax.  She had the EXTRA SPECIAL dose, enough to put a 200 lbs man on his ass, given to her by her doctors… possibly even more than one “doctor”.  From my past dealings with her, I knew that she was capable of much fiction and drama, but she was so adamant about it… she was freaking out, crying to me about how she had made a huge mistake, how my Step-father pulled a fast one on her and manipulated the sale of her Condo in “Farmfield” and the purchase of the new home.  I am still baffled by what it was that he had actually done… from what I can tell, I believe he was supposed to put the $20,000 from the infamous “second HELOC loan” into the house as CASH rather than in the form of a loan.

 

I’m still waiting for my day in court over that… My former step-father is suing me for not paying that loan which is in his name.  I recall him being a very angry, miserable bastard… always competitive and never happy for more than a moments time, usually over some small conquest or a sports game.  He was stubborn as ALL hell.  While he had his moments of kindness, he never was a genuinely good spirited fellow.  It took me awhile to see that…

 

As I tried to discern what Mom was blubbering into the phone through a stream of tears and anguish, I became extremely terrified for her life… she was literally fearing for her life, and I’d never heard her sound like that before…

 

She was SO upset…  She had gotten so far in life… she had accomplished so much, and now this douche bag was practically taking it all away from her without guilt or remorse.  He was always one to capitalize on a situation that would benefit him.

 

I became frantic… I started yelling at her, telling her that she needs to calm down; she was scaring the shit out of me!  I started to tell her that I would drop everything to come up and take care of this matter myself if I had to.

 

“I’ll leave right now, I won’t even go home and pack, I’ll hit the road from right where I am, and I’ll come up there and make sure you’re alright!”

 

And I almost did….

 

….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She finally started to calm down a bit, at least enough to be able to converse with me without me having to tell her to repeat herself over and over again.  She started saying how she would have never sold the condo if she had known that things were going to work out the way they did.  She wanted to get the condo BACK!  I asked her if there was anything I could do, if there was anyone I could call or help in someway…

 

It was a bit difficult being 1000 miles away, but I was sure as shit going to try.  That’s my MOTHER, the only one I got.

It was around this very moment, that I had found myself pacing and wandering around the premises of my Uncle’s Warehouse, all the way into the parking lot of a neighboring hotel.  I had NEVER walked back that way before, and I’m not exactly sure what compelled me to do so…  I’d been working there on and off for about 2 ½ years at the time…  and never ventured to this new area.

 

That’s where I found it.

 

A folded up, crispy Five Dollar Bill.

 

Just chillin’, on the outermost edge of the hotel parking lot.

 

When I found it, I smiled to myself and said in my own head…

 

“I’m going to use this to do something nice for Mom… maybe take her out to eat at the old McDonalds we used to go to together…  she would like that.”

 

She was always so humble… and for me, she was so easy to please and to make smile…

 

She gave me the number to the realtor and asked me if I would call to try and figure our what the options were in terms of getting the condo back.

 

I made the phone call, and the realtor was very adamant about it being IMPOSSIBLE to get it back.  She told me that even if she DID back out of the closing, which had already taken place, hence mom’s emotional outcry for help, that the new owners would sue in court, and win, and perhaps even get the condo without paying as much for it, as well as costing mom tons of money for legal fees and such.

 

That just wasn’t an option…

 

Although at least I got to here that for myself…

 

Being a 22 year old college kid with no ambitions of becoming a real estate tycoon back then, (back then… -grin-) I wasn’t sure what exactly had taken place to make mom so upset at the close… even the realtor told me that she was bawling and crying. Mom even told me later how everyone in the room was muttering about how big of a prick that my former Step-Father was being about the whole thing…

 

Even though I had called mom back, and told her what was said, and we ended our conversation well, I still had this hankering feeling… this desire to go up there to “Midwest” and help sort out this mess she was in.  I knew how hard she was to deal with at times… she had a LOOOOONG history of being a Drama starter…  it typically  got FAR worse when she would get FUCKED UP on pills and booze.

 

However…  I went on to the show…

 

And it was one of the WORST concert experiences of my life.

 

My girl brought her 16 year old friend with her, and she was SO incredibly annoying.  She was whining and bitching about NOTHING and EVERYTHING.  While at the 2 day outdoor venue, she would CONSTANTLY BITCH about people bumping into her.  It’s a ROCK SHOW, with 20,000 DRUNK PEOPLE, what the HELL do you expect?

 

Her friend finally went off with other people she knew that she had ran into, and there was a bit of a reprieve…  but I used to get so “escalated” and the fact that my girl was being “standoff-ish”, like she would often get, only annoyed me that much more.

 

After Rob Zombie went on, Kid Rock was the final act of the night.  And I LOVE me some Kid Rock!!!!  He put on the most INCREDIBLE show the year I went to see him before, my friend got us FRONT ROW tickets… and to this day, it was the most incredible concert I’d ever been to.  With all these bands…  Stone Temple Pilots, Rob Zombie, Head P.E., Sevendust, Kid Rock, and SO many others, I was all kinds of excited to see them all… but after the first hour of Kid Rock, my girl starts trying to drag me back to the car… and I SNAPPED on her…  I had let myself get SO annoyed that I finally blew up right then and there.

 

“THIS IS THE MAIN REASON WHY I’M HERE!  YOU KNOW I LOVE KID ROCK!  DON’T RUIN THIS FOR ME!”

 

Sure enough, Kid Rock put on another awesome show, he always does, but I kind of lost my excitement after what happened… perhaps I was feeling guilty for being such a prick… but back then, I would defend my actions with my desires being thwarted and unfulfilled.  At any rate…  I was FAR to stubborn to apologize for it, and I remained in a pissy mood for the rest of the show, and into most of the night.  The year before, we had the most INCREDIBLE experience together both during, but especially after the show…  things were SO good back then…  I guess they usually are in the beginning… but this year I found myself infuriated and seriously annoyed.  I remained “asshole” throughout most the next day.

 

We finally got home, where my new found stray cat, Slinky, that I’d taken in just a few weeks before had been ready to BURST with kittens.  We think that she waited for me to come home before she had them… although the experts say that when you’re ready to give birth… there’s nooooo stopping it.

 

But Slinky is pretty damn stubborn too.

 

My girl and I woke up to Slinky talking up a storm, meowing and licking us, annoying the crap out of us… we were SO tired, but we had no idea what she wanted…

 

She had the kittens…  3 of them.

 

But they were all still-borne… and HUGE… they all looked like they were a few weeks old!  Double, even TRIPLE the size of normal new-born kittens!  I’d never even HEARD of anything like happening that before…

 

That moment was hard for my girl… she is a very adamant cat lover, animal lover in general…  as am I.  It was a bit of a bonding moment for us after the rough patch we’d had over the weekend.

 

We both shed a few tears together… and then took Slinky and the kittens to the vet again to see if we could find out what happened…   I didn’t care for that vet much… he wasn’t very informative, and extremely expensive in my opinion…  he didn’t have any definitive answers for us… but he did “dispose” of the kittens for us.

 

I recall on the same day, I received a priority mailing from Mom.  She called me a few times while we were on our way to the show to tell me she had some “important papers” she needed me to have…

 

As it turns out…

 

It was her Last Will and Testament.

 

I was a bit put off by this… especially after the week I’ve had.

 

I was thinking that it was one of mom’s bi-polar mood swings and she sent the papers out in a barrage of emotion and delusion about the “trying to kill me” conversation we had a few weeks earlier.  When I got the papers, we had talked about it all, and she kept telling me how “this house is your legacy, I always wanted to leave you a house when I’m gone.” 

 

“Ok mom, but I really don’t care THAT much right now…  I’d much rather have you around in my life than a house.”

 

 

 

 

She swore to me that she would NEVER kill herself, she talked about how no one would take care of her dog “Peppy Pierre” like she could…  how Trigger needed her too, after Triggers Sister Calico died in the mysterious garage door incident just a few weeks earlier…

 

 

Mom and I talked a few more times via telephone and AOL Instant Messenger, but her and I eventually got pissed off at one another (it was a regular occurrence) and quit communicating for awhile…

 

 

 

 

Mom and I had spoken on the phone a few times in late June, I had just started working for the Real Estate office that I still sometimes worked for on the side…  they needed all new computers, software upgrades and a network to utilize there high speed cable connection. 

SCORE!

 

They were my best clients for my business that officially received my EIN Number for in July.

 

It was the night of July 3rd, I was pulling an all-nighter trying to get the job done so I didn’t have to come back later on.  I had just finished the second computer and ran the Cat 5 cables through the drop ceiling and wanted to test it out, so I installed AIM and logged in. 

 

I saw mom online…

 

 

 

I tried to say hi to her, and I told her to call me…

 

I told her that I loved her…

 

 

I never did get a response.

 

I never did…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I walked outside at about 7am on July 4th or so to smoke a cigarette, the sun was just coming up, and I was having a hell of a time with one of the “problematic” Windows XP installations, and I had to try it 4 times…  I had been working on all the other machines while I was waiting for it to finish, and now it was the finishing touch on what I needed to do to have it all done.  As I stepped outside, and went to my car for my cigarettes…

and it hits me…

 

FUCK

 

The door had locked behind me…

 

So…

 

I was gunna have to come back after all, I didn’t have a key for it, and it was a Holiday and all…

 

So I went up to my uncles warehouse to play around with some of my website projects and check the messages on our automated dial in directory answering system that I got all hooked up… 

 

for whatever reason…

 

My Uncle called up there…

 

at 8am on July 4th?

 

We never opened before 10am, I found it odd to be listening to him begin leaving a message… the timing and all… 

 

I snatched up the phone before he ended his message… and the recorder kept recording our conversation. 

 

“Hey what’s up man?”

 

Uncle: “I thought you might be up there…”

 

“Yea, I got locked out of the Kalyvas office after pulling an all-nighter and stopped by here on my way –“

 

Uncle: “I need you come here now.”

 

“Come where?”

 

Uncle: “I’m at home.  I need you to come here right now.”

 

“….ok man…  I’ll be there in a minute…”

 

I remember that conversation like it was 10 minutes ago.

 

In fact… I heard it a few more times… given the fact that it WAS recorded and all…

 

 

 

I never did get to spend that $5 bill on Mom…

 

But I kept it all these years… in the same wallet that I’ve had since then.

 

It’s been hard to not blame myself… not to think about all the “what if’s” and “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s” and I tried to use the old “bottle it up” technique that I’d become famous for.  Sweep it under the rug and forge ahead.

 

Maybe it works for a little while…

 

But it doesn’t work forever.

 

I’ve been through a lot of self-anguish over the whole thing, but I finally made peace with myself…

 

and with her.

 

 

 

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