The stuff we are stuck with

MY daughter’s boyfriend has stolen her car.

Again. This is the second time.

I say boyfriend but, as you can imagine, I should have said ex-boyfriend.

It wasn’t an expensive car. It was probably worth about $3000. I was inclined to anger when I first heard, then I looked on it as money well spent, if it means the brain-dead, devious, morally bankrupt moron will go away and leave her alone.

Actually, he may have no choice. He’s on bail for driving without a licence. The last time he did it they threw him in jail for a month.

Of course, one must be charitable. It might have been faulty potty training, or he might simply be searching for a meaning in life. So I hope they throw him in for six months this time. That’ll give him plenty of time to find it.

Then I’ll be able to concentrate on the other daughter. Her partner has just left. They have two children, neither of which is yet two years old. I’m not saying it’s his fault. It takes two to tango, after all, and the fact that for the best part of four years he has been an idle, drifting, dole-bludging layabout with his head up his own backside is probably not relevant.

I was telling Bill about it. Bill is an old friend who is going through some serious depression about life the universe and everything.

The trouble is that once you find yourself sliding into this funnel there’s no way out except through your own mental processes.

I’ve not been where Bill is, but I’ve been close enough to know that being told to snap out of it is about as useful as being told to lift yourself off the ground with your own shoelaces.

I feel sorry for Bill. He doesn’t want to be there but until he changes the way he thinks he’s stuck with it.

Then I thought, maybe it’s the same with the boyfriends!

I mean, the car thief has his good points. He can be very generous. Probably with stuff he’s flogged from someone else, but at least he shares it around.

And on a good day the father of my grandchildren is a good father, if changing nappies makes you a good father.

Maybe all the other stuff is stuff they’re stuck with. Maybe their upbringings left them emotionally damaged, as well as rat cunning and bone idle respectively.

This is a tolerant age in which the concepts of good and evil have to some extent been discredited by scientists and psychologists. We are all the product of our inherited genes and our environment.

We are not to blame!

Well bugger that!

This is my family we’re talking about. It’s my kids and my grandkids who are bearing the brunt of all this compassion and understanding. And when I lose control and go after these feckless deadbeats with a cleaver it will not be my fault. It will merely be because I am the victim of my genetic and environmental inheritance.

Did I say I was a victim?

How thoughtless of me. I was forgetting — it’s they who are the victims.

I’m going to see to it personally!