and standing around a bunch of Jews, on purpose, being bored because I was the other person in said group who did not speak Hebrew nor could even parse out any words or even cognates, being embarassed because I sat next to my abba and that happened to be near the tree roots which had some sticky tree, goop on it well scratch that the goop was now on the back of my brown pants Horaaaay.
Did I mention I was bored? Yes okay it was a parade for...whatever reason cities have parades, and yes okay my sister was playing in the marching band and yes okay it's the one who makes "that's my sister" noises around me and others but Gawd they're boring. And I don't know anyone that either my stepmom pointed out, or that my abba made fun of and I was starting to get frustrated by being around really really subdued, mid-to-late 50s aged liberal...people. It's not like I...well I guess even if it were Rivercide I wouldn't have anyone to talk to anyway either. But still.
моя tyotya (and now I'm losing the spelling, le boo hoo) mentioned later that day about how there were children running around the hotel they were staying at. And it was explained to her that people move in there and live. Like, live-live. When she asked how people could do that, how they could live like that, I didn't offer to enlighten her. I could have just innocently mentioned how in California it's against the law to stay now in one hotel/motel for more than I think a month, so now, instead of blight and oh em gee these poor children living in a motel all their young lives, oh em gee these poor children have to up and fucking move every month or so. If they're not lucky enough to be in the same school district, sometimes they get their paperwork caught up and don't miss more than...idunno, gosh a couple days? Maybe a week? Possibly the move can be made like, on a Friday and the kid's back in school for Monday, but then if the parents(singular) is on top of things enough to arrange that, they're probably not gonna be in motels too long anyway.
Oh wait I forgot public schools are super awesome evil. In no instances are they the civilizing factor the only of such in a child's life. Well. I shouldn't start on that; mine was the government sponsored and ran CPS repository that sits in between a county jail and a dog pound (so those liberated government-educated, unwittingly pathetic womyns can get all their ah, errands done near the same bus stop, I guess.)
What was I...oh yeah the law about not living in motels longer than whatever amount of time allowed. Perhaps it's just a county ordinance, I wasn't too keen on reading up on my future real estate prospects like those once I moved out of Orange County. But I do remember hearing about it when I worked for CPS. Turned out that "parents" too stupid to either not piss off a social worker or hide their real abuse tend, oh so strongly tend to be too stupid to give a forwarding address additionally. Shocked I was not really. More so pissed off at the sw of a couple days ago, helping a little girl of maybe six change into clean clothes in the restroom.
*Me washing my hands*
sw: blah blaaaaaah clothes! Clean clothes! Get changed!
girl: ...
oh fuck the dialogue. I don't remember exactly what the little girl said, mostly six year old babble. idunno why she was taken in...mmmm right now a year later I'd guess that it was just that the sw showed up and the ah, domocile, was so filthy and the kid likewise so much that Ron Paul just lost five votes.
Anyway, the fat sw (I think redundancy cancels out an oxymoron) was trying to get the little girl to change into clean clothes. And...a lot of sws have their own kids. Ranging from late twenties to old as dirt, these womyn are used to little kids changing they've had their own kids, blah blah.
Fat sw told the girl something about socks. Oooh we got you clean socks, put the second sock on. The little girl mumbled something about her sock that she had on like "I have one sock on."
And it wasn't so much of ...well it was. I don't want to be a social worker. I look at that "profession" like I see teaching /federal babysitting. I like kids too much to want to be one. At the same time, I have a perspective on 'tha system' that I'm arrogantly certain that 90% of sws do not have. I've been on the other side of their interviews that were supposedly conducted in the strictest confidence. I've been six years old and told to change out of my dirty clothes that earlier that day I thought were about on the upper level of acceptability.
And you know what would just boggle Fat sw's fucking mind? The idea that a big fat teacher looking, dinosaur face (I don't know how there were so many womyns in that office with a face like a stegasaurus; if I ever did drugs I'd swear I was tripping and thinking I was in the Land Before Time), blonde ugly butch-chop hair with no makeup and an ass wider than her torso was long, barking at me in a fake nice-civilized-upperclass tone of voice how to change my clothes...is frightening to a six year old. Pass the boooooooong, fucker.
The little girl in the disabled bathroom stall probably thought she was in trouble; not so much for her lackadasical clothes-changing, but in the whole "taking a ride with a stranger" when she went with the fat woman in the first place. Idunno. But the sw's reaction to "I have one sock on" was just "put your other sock on, we have to get you changed" and then whatever gurgling noise she made at the other social worker standing in the stall with them.
YES. TWO. What, the little girl had a knife or something?
How about "That's great, let's get the second one on and you'll be all set."
Couple weeks later, or a couple weeks before, that little girl's mom shows up as Ten years later at reception. Her sw wasn't in. It was a Friday. County workers; so 50/50 chance that she had a three day weekend. Mom can't see anyone, can't get shit done except show me how little it takes for me to forsake common sense because I rely on a paycheck to live, instead of the Truth.
Mom: Well, here's my situation though. My daughter's 16/17 and ran away from the group home/foster home she was just moved to. I know where she's staying, I know she's staying with this *considerably older or violent drug dealer or rapist or something* guy. The group home/foster home hasn't called in a report yet. If I go to where she is and get her, it'll count as an unsupervised visit, and I'm not allowed unsupervised visits and the judge if he finds out can *blah blah totally fuck me over something something been doing everything else right*...what do you think I should do?
Me, did not say: What the...what the fuck? GET YOUR FUCKING CHILD, DAMMIT.
Me, actually: uuuuh. That's a tough situation. *looked to the other receptionist who rambled on about leaving messages with the group home or ...something.*
And of course, after the scared chronologically 40-something, mentally 14 years old woman left, the receptionist and I had the God damned gall to act annoyed by someone so badgered by everyone else telling her what to do that she was helpless. From her shitty parents, to the part of her that hates herself and her child, to eventually the Department of Public Social Services. Child Protective Services branch, specifically.
And what I really hate about Nevada. About sleeping under my dad's roof. Er, under their floor in their basement/library room. Seeing pictures of my sisters in the second grade magnet'ed onto the fridge, their Jewish-Israeli birth certificates on the wall. Seeing pictures of my grandfather who died like, idunno 30some-odd years ago and choking on the part of my throat when the referents "I have a grandfather" form in my head. The oddness of being hugged by my dad, which I don't think either one of us is used to.
What I really hate about Nevada, is that I can't get this stuff out of my head. The shoebox only two thirds full of pictures, the remaining third of which I threw away when I realized that they were all of people from high school who just happened to let me take their picture.
What I dislike about standing around watching parades witha group of oldish Jewish people is that no one would have gotten the irony of the monument to Le Guerre Monde
being right behind us as we looked forward into the street where trucks with politicians' names on the sides were carrying at two miles an hour said politicians or representatives (Northeast Nevada can't command Obama yet) literally throw candy out at people into the streets, for the youngest subjects to scramble to pick up.
Quoth my sister-in-law: Seriously. Why do we study history. It's in the past.
