Parenting And Relationships

It’s A Challenge

It’s A Challenge



To be a good Parent May be The Challenge of your Life. The Bible says go forth and multiply, some Half Wit Philosopher said your Life is not fulfilled until you have Children.  Not disputing the Bible, but I match with the latter. Having and raising Children isn’t all that it’s cropped up to be. First of all, once they come on the screen, your Life is changed. You can’t go out Drinking and hanging with the Boys every Weekend coming Home in the Am looking through three Eyes, and leaving  the little Woman alone to deal with the miseries, they throw at her, if you could only see yourself through her eyes . No you have to be there to get your share of the loaded Diapers , the middle of the night wailing, then they grow to be little People with big attitudes. Woke up one day and find that your Life has changed, or should, you can’t use the vulgarity you are used to spitting. When you think that they are not listening, one day they hit you with something like, ” uncle Tony you’re F*c***g kidding me are you. Four years old with the mouth of yourself. It’s a life changing experience.



I would rather own a Racehorse, sometimes they do win and pay for their upkeep.  You can invest a Bushel in a child’s upkeep, upbringing and Education, and they turn out to be Bums, use Drugs and hanging with the Underbellies of Society. So where did you go wrong,  you didn’t, they did, it’s a Crap Shoot. Sometimes you raise Thoroughbreds and other times strangers. I have met Educated adults who refused to put it to good use, move out and make their own way. Before they  get to that point they make your Life absolutely miserable, by acting like they are the Parents. Sometimes they are just Adolescents with big attitudes. By the time they turn Teenagers, they are ready to give you a good ass whipping.


You try to pass on to them the benefits of all you have learned about Life, and they think that you are Stupid, for trying to save them from the disaster of themselves . I am not just talking off the top of my Head. When I was fourteen I was a big Pot Head who drank colt 45. Thank God I kept my intemperance for the Weekend,  and not School hours, also thank God for a strong willed person I called Mom. As I said before the Challenge is Great. So the next time you think about making Babies, ask yourself, am I up to the aftermath.

Related Blog

Stand Up Dad

Making Babies and running off is an awful trait associated with Men, just about animalistic if you ask me. Bad enough when Men do it, but when a Woman meets a Man and run off leaving two young Daughters, that is despicable,I don’t care how good looking or Rich he is, I don’t even care if your marriage is horrendous. Your first priority is your Children. No matter what the circumstances are, your new Man don’t want Kids or your Husband is undeserving of you, first and foremost you are a Mother. Mothers are a special Breed, their propensity to Love care and nurture is unyielding. My Mother was incredible at the art of Motherhood, raising two Boys by herself, she was Mother and Father, a good provider, Teacher and Mentor. Struggling with two Boys, she once met a Man who professed his love for her, a Doctor by profession. He wanted to marry her, with one catch, he wanted her to put her sixteen and nineteen years old out of the House. I guess he feared that if he turned out to be Mr Hyde we would beat him silly, that request enraged her, she sent him packing. Now that’s A good Mother.



Philip was married for twelve years, came home one day and his wife was gone, leaving two young Daughters behind, to raise by himself. Being a stand up Dad, he embraced the challenge boldly. Children can be heartless people, the way they challenge disobey and disrespect us when we are trying our best. My only satisfaction I get from them being Brats, is knowing that their day will come when their own Kids will do the same to them.Philip’s Kids were brutal, they put him through the grinder with their attitude. They acted as if he was the one who ran their Mother off, when it was her own hormones that made her run off leaving them behind. He did his best as Mr Mom, putting his own life on hold for a long time. Making sure that he brought the right Woman home, to fill the void left by the self centered one who ran off abandoning her Family. One day he met a Librarian and decided to marry her, it is never a good idea to raise Girls alone. Girls need the female influence of a Mother, even just for rounding out. Needless to say the Girls did not welcome her with open arms. They were Vociferous and openly challenging and disrespectful. Disapproval was high, they did not care if she was Queen Elizabeth. She was not theIr no good Mother who they were too blind to disown and reciprocatively abandoned. The years progressed with little tranquility, one day through the act of God or goodwill by the new Mom,they came around and acknowledged that she is more deserving of their respect love and appreciation, than the one who gave them Birth. I guess the Lord do work in mysterious ways.

Health, Life, Parenting And Relationships

A Junkie’s Poem

Substance abuse

A Junkie’s Poem

As the saying goes Fool me once is never enough, over the years observing the Monkey on my back. makes me wonder how many times must I be fooled  to get the message, this isn’t Kansas and haven’t  been  for a long time. The Monkey picks you up and lay you down over and again but he is still your friend.

Mother always told us be careful who you choose for friends because if you walk in filth you will stink. Can’t you tell everyone around is backing away, they treat you like a vagrant and all, you are an outcast from Society, your family and friends, but you still hang tight with your monkey for a friend. You are in and out of the System, it’s now your permanent address even though your dual Residence is the Streets.

I look in the Mirror I see a face but who is it, certainly not the me of fifteen, a smart ambitious kid who wanted to be a pharmacist not the Junkie at the other end of a needle or a stem, not the Geek with a mouthful of Oxi, it’s early afternoon and I’ve lost count. I can hear Billy echoing Eyes without a face, while Janis wails about her Ball and Chain. Who is that man in the mirror, I look further and deeper  and all I see is a skull, the skull has been my moniker science hearing of Casey Jones.

Grateful Dead/forever

Not realizing how wasted I am and will not find my way home until I ask for help. Sitting in a Room of despair striking the fire one more time

trying to get back to the elusive initial high that is never going to come, because that is just the way Crack is, she is a Temptress that will never satisfy the crave. Deep down the shell of the old me the kid that was good with Math that yearns for his old self, I am lost in a fog of Meth vapors and can’t count the step backwards to where it all began.

A Fool is too proud to ask for help while a wise Man knows to come in from the Rain. My life is one big storm taking me further from  reality, while the monkey is taking me to the Cliff.

When I am broke I feel it’s wrath shaking me to find a fix even though what I do for my friend I wouldn’t do for myself. When I hear the Steel Doors slam I now realize that I am lost because here at Home there is no friend only rejection from my Monkey who I left in a cold dark Alley.

P.S. The Lord help those that help themselves

Parenting And Relationships

Responsibility

Responsibility



When I was a teenager I thought that growing up meant being free of my mother’s constant nagging about the person she wanted me to be. A proud Man with values that others would admire. Having respect for my fellow man, not hurting anyone directly or indirectly, not stealing or cheating, to be precise do unto others as you would have them do to you. All through those turbulent teen years it never occurred to me that what Mother was doing was preparing me for the life ahead of me. She was teaching responsibility to an oblivious teen who could not wait to be an adult and do all the bad things that adults do, like too many sex partners, excessive use of alcohol and drugs. It never occurred to me that they were wasting their lives and killing themselves. I once worked with a twenty one years old man who had heart murmur  from the amount of coke that he ingested from seventeen to twenty one. Can you imagine a young man with the heart of an old man. I also met a Man who didn’t know the names of all his children, he had so many with different Women. Yet another man who drank anything other than milk or water and his stomach would bleed, from all the alcohol he drank .




All this boiled down to responsibility, something that too many adults lack. Immature and irresponsible they know how to scratch the itch but nothing about parenting, I would need a calculator to tabulate the amount of men that I have met in their forties and fifties with the mentality of a fifteen year old. Looking back I thank mom for all the nagging. Of all the misfits that I have been unfortunate to have met in my life, I must say mother did her Job raising two Boys by herself with great success. Neither one of us possess a compulsive obsessive disorder, both good husbands and  fathers, world class citizens who respect all of God’s Creatures.
Parenting comes easy for me, lead by example and pass on values through the way you live your life, it can’t be taught. Trying to teach values and living your life in a gregarious manner is contradicting.



The other day I noticed a young man with two young boys heading to the Beach, in one Hand he had a twelve pack of beer in the other was an opened can that he was sipping from. The message he was sending, public drunkenness was against the law but cool anyway, how contradictory. It’s the same when you invite a bunch of friends over, everybody gets shit-faced and trash talk when the kids are within earshot. That’s  irresponsibility , kids are like sponges they absorb their Environment. Once I was sitting at the kitchen table with my friend’s wife having a conversation when her eight years old son could not get her attention he vehemently declared mommy you are a Bitch , instead of slapping his face and giving credibility to his vulgarity, she asked him why he called her that. He staunchly replied Daddy said that you are.

 

 

It appeared that he and his dad had a conversation about something that his mother told him he couldn’t have and his response was, don’t mind her she is a Bitch. On another occasion we were in his Basement doing some work, the Door leading upstairs was slightly ajar. His eighth years and his six years was locked in a fierce Verbal confrontation, calling each other every vulgar names under the Sun. I thought to myself these kinds weren’t being Raised up they were being dragged up by irresponsible people who were clueless that their children were living their parents lives mimicking the way they interacted with each other. Six years later the girl was sitting in the Driver’s seat of his Truck, he had his Hand between the Door Frame and the Door. After years of watching her Mother being abused she slammed the Door shut on his Hand, he had unwittingly corrupted his daughter. As I have said over and again, anyone can make Babies, but we all don’t possess the level of responsibility to be good Parents.

 

 

Life

Blogging The Book/ excerpts1

1990 I moved from the tranquility of the Poccono Mountains to a small Town in Nothern Pennsylvania called Wilkes Barre. In 1990 I would be amazed if the Population was one Million, yet the Crime Rate was just as startling as the Bronx. It was here that I met a young Man named Vincent Barberio, we met while working for the same Company and became great Friends. One Day Vince approached me and told me that If I didn’t mind working hard and traveling he knew of a contractor that was hiring at a better rate of pay than we were making. The only drawback was the Travel, the Jobs were spread out from North Carolina to Buffalo, from New York to Ohio.

We would pack a Duffle Bag and a cooler, left Monday and returned on Friday, the Company paid for the Hotel so that absorbed a lot of the cost. Vince and I always Roomed together, there were a lot of Rift Raft in the Crew so we watched each other’s back. After work we would return to our Hotel Room eat chill out watch TV and share stories about our Lives. We became good friends to the point where we introduced each other to our family, of all the People that I worked with in my Lifetime, Vince was one of the privileged few to got an invitation to my Home. The reason for that is you don’t go into business with Family and you don’t socialize with all your Coworkers, you should always be selective with Coworkers, they are not always trustworthy with your business and they spread gossip.

Not so with Vince and I, whatever secrets we shared stay that way. When I started writing Blogs one of my first Blogs were about Vince under a fictitious name. Today I can write about my Friend Vinny because while doing research I found out that he Died in 2016 seventeen years after I last seen him sitting at the Table in my kitchen. What preceded and followed our last meeting is noteworthy, because this also was a Tragic encounter. The Day after our last meeting Vincent Barberio was on Television, the Cops had surrounded his position and there was no way out.

Vince had lost it and taken his Girlfriend and his Baby Boy hostage I am not sure if he had threatened to kill them and himself or just himself. The situation was tense for hours, I was frazzled with stress that the Cops would act rashly and a Sharpshooter would have taken him out. Thank God there were no shooting, he allowed them to get close to him and was Tazed or pepper sprayed and hauled off to be Psycho analyzed and probably spend years in a Nuthouse. The events that preceded this Tragic encounter  were told to me by Vince for months while we shared Hotel Rooms while working in the contracting business. Sometimes he was repetitive but that’s what happens when things eats at you since you were a Child.

So here it is from Vincent’s mouth to my ears to yours. At an early age maybe nine he was Molested by an Uncle like myself he never told his Parents, the molester probably threatened him or laid a guilt trip on him. For a moment’s pleasure the Molester not only robbed my friend of his youthful innocenc but his entire Life. Shortly after the abuse Vince changed for the worse, as most Molested Children do. Being Molested didn’t have any effect on me because I extracted my own Justice. Poor Vince was a skinny nine year old, he was Traumatized, kept the secret to himself for twelve years until he bared his Soul to me.

Can you imagine the weight off his shoulders. Why wouldn’t he consider me a great friend knowing that I wouldn’t tell not another living Soul. The real tragedy occurred during those twelve years before he laid his burden on my receptive Shoulders. Shortly after the Molestation his personality took a hundred and eighty degrees turn, School, behavior and everything else in his young life went for a nosedive, speaking of Dives I believe he was twelve not knowing how to deal with the Guilt Repression he tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Market Street Bridge and found the only Rock waiting there for him.

Grateful Dead/forever

He survived that Rock and picked up a new one(Cocaine)  that one got him in trouble with the Law up to the Hostage situation. Can you believe  the Mayhem that Cocaine have done to our Societies since Hernan Cortez whacked out on Cocaine and wiped out an entire Civilization of Brilliant People to the Massacres on the Streets of Brooklyn five hundred years later, are we ever going to learn that the Plant is only ment for Medicinal use. Well my Friend Vinny never learned. While doing research on him I found out that in the year 2016 he Died unexpectedly at thirty nine years old. From past experiences when a user Dies unexpectedly it is usually from current use or years of abuse finally catching up to you. Rest well my Friend you are not Tormented anymore, and so another Tragic Encounter closed.

P.S. I will never forget you my Brother

 

 

incent Barberio Jr. Obituary

Vincent Barberio Jr. passed away unexpectedly in Baltimore, Md., on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016.

He was born Aug. 7, 1967, to the late Vincent and Marlene Barberio.

Vincent moved to Baltimore, Md., in 2006, and had resided there the last 10 years. He was employed by Jimmy Trujillo’s Game Sports Bar in Baltimore, Md. There he worked in the shadow of the Ravens Stadium and Camden Yards, catering to customers’ needs, where he was known and liked by all.

The family is forever grateful to the Trujillo family for giving Vincent opportunity and friendship. He was blessed to be able to work for such thoughtful people and kind coworkers. Their generosity, sincerity, and caring will not be soon forgotten. We thank them for reaching out to Vincent and our family.

Vincent attended GAR Memorial High School, where he was a gifted athlete.

He was an acolyte with his brothers, Victor and John, for many years, serving Holy Rosary Church on Park Avenue.

Vincent is survived by his children, Sean Cupil, Plymouth; and Corianna Cupil, Edwardsville; sisters, Darlene (David) Payne, Dallas; and Susan (Matt) Crowl, Dallas; brothers, John (Wendy) Barberio, Dallas; and twin brother, Victor Barberio, Wilkes-Barre; as well as several aunts, uncles and cousins.

We will all cherish the good memories of Vincent. We all know he is at peace, for his toil and strife with addiction is over. He will be in our hearts forever.

Private funeral services will be held at the convenience of the family.

Local arrangements are under the direction of Richard H. Disque Funeral Home, 2940 Memorial Highway, Dallas.

Published in Citizens’ Voice on Sept. 24, 2016

Blogging the Book is constantly adding

More Tragic Encounters you need to check regularly

Coming soon my friend Ed Byrne became a Cop seven months later Thugs shoots him in the Head five times.

Life, Parenting And Relationships

Mother’s Little Helper



Josie was born Gifted,  she possessed great Love understanding and Empathy, whenever others around her was sad so was she, when they hurt so did she. Her childhood in rural Pennsylvania was filled with bliss, far away from Urban life, nestled in luscious nature was all she needed to grow and flourish. And so did she transcending into the most tranquil of adolescents. Her Parents were overwhelmed with her matured mentality, her attitude of total bliss with her existence. This Child’s Godliness behooved the local Ministry. Her Congeniality with all God’s creatures Humans and Animals alike, mystified even the Fawns that came looking for her at the break of Dawn, while she tended her Vegetables. In School everyone wanted to be close to her, in her presence there was always serenity and control.

 

 


 

At twelve years old the maturity she exhibited was uncommon for her counterparts. At Home she emulated her Mother as a Homemaker, never to be told to do chores. Work ethics beyond a seasoned team player, always filled in whenever needed. When  mother was sick she was the Woman of the House. At twelve years old she cooked cleaned and sewed like a pro. All this talent from being a Mother’s Helper that was a quick learner. Joan her Mom was from the old School, she believed that Kids should not be babied, but be given the tools they need to live as early as possible. Good hygiene, Homemaking and People skills were a must. So it’s no wonder that at age twelve Josie was now prepared to take over the job of running the Household with Mom’s failing Health. As Joan’ s health progressively deteriorated, she was filled with pride and sorrows. Proud of her Daughter’s maturity, sad to know that she was leaving this Beautiful Angel to finish the job of raising herself, and keeping her Dad from giving up on Life.

 



Joan’s Passing left a huge void in everyone’s life, most of all her Husband, to him the blow was devastating. He progressively withdrew from  Life, he barely maintained his Job with the strength and encouragement from Josie. She was the Pillar of his sanity, a constant reminder of her Mother, which made things easy and hard. Her devotion to mentally nourish Dad back to Life was an unbecoming talent of anyone child or adult. When her Father locked himself in his room of depression, she would bring him out with gentle levity, like excuse me sir have you seen my Dad. He immediately knew what she was saying and responded with gratitude and Love. Without this kid’s tenacity to give and to Love he would not have been able to overcome the loss. With Josie around he had no need to run for the shelter of Mother’s Little Helper.