Being Don Being Donny - Intro

ALL STORY LIST | CHAPTERS - CH 1 | CH 2 | CH 3 | CH 4 | CH 5 | CH 6 | CH 7 

Drunk again! Dad’s drinking is a big problem! I hate the way he is when he’s so loaded. He’s vulgar, spiteful, bitter, and even cruel towards everyone. No one is to blame for mom’s death. Her heart couldn’t carry the load of the excessive weight she gradually put on after I was born.

She claimed it was genetic. All the women's ancestors were overweight. They also all died young, but she ignored that one glaring detail when her doctors tried to warn her. Oh, she tried. I remember all the ‘fad’ diets she put us on. I was on a weight-watcher seesaw. We ate like horses, bingeing on snack foods for months at a time. Then, we’d go on starvation rations.

Our snacks were limited to celery sticks or rice cakes. Evening meals resembled concentration camp portions instead of opulent feasts. The only reason dad kept so slim was that he was usually on the road, selling. There was never a happy medium at our house. If I went to a friend’s house, I’d garbage up if snacks were served, so I wouldn’t get headaches from not getting enough to eat at home.

She went so far as to file a ‘healthy’ diet plan to the school meal program for me, so I couldn’t pig out at lunch. The school didn’t balk at her orders, since I looked like I needed to lose weight. Yeah, I was fat, but the extreme swings in my diet prompted me to garbage up just as soon as one program failed, since I knew we’d be going on some other radical diet, as soon as mom found out about it.

I was fat. Some people are. So what? I don’t like sports. Getting sweated up isn’t my idea of having fun. I prefer to read and watch the tube. Who needs a svelte body if you’re a ‘couch potato’? I wasn’t a ‘blimp’, just hefty. That’s what I tell myself when I look in a mirror. I always see a normal kid, not a lard-ass.

At school, I’d hover over other kids’ food trays so rigorously, friends started to ‘duck out on me. I couldn’t help it. I was always hungry. So, I was fat! Big deal! Can I help it if my genes cause me to covet food more than others? The guys all know I hate sports, so they don’t bother to ask me to join them when they go off to work out. Who needs ‘em?

When mom’s death was attributed to a cardiac deficiency promulgated by her advanced obesity, I knew it was only a matter of time before some doctor would write the exact cause of death on a certificate with my name on it.

When mom passed on I was fifteen, and dad had to change his job assignment to look after me. He couldn’t go out on the road and be gone for days at a time. We had no close relatives near us to keep an eye on me. It was only temporary until I could get a part-time job after school to stay out of trouble. Dad hated it.

His employer put him in shipping at less pay. He was filling out orders to his own customers, customers he established. Someone else was getting paid all the commissions instead of him! Another reason dad started to drink. When I turned sixteen, I looked fruitlessly for a part-time job, so dad could go back to selling. No employer wanted a fat kid on the payroll. That didn’t matter much. By that time, dad’s heavy drinking problem progressed to the point of him getting laid off.

Yet, dad got pie-eyed almost every day, using his job loss as an excuse to sop up the hooch in the daytime as well as at night. He went through most of the little savings he had after paying off the expense of mom’s passing and was bitter as hell when he got the foreclosure letter from the bank. He missed three mortgage payments and had no means of proving mortgage worthiness.

The bank was sympathetic but insisted the mortgage has to be paid off. I was at the meeting when the polite lady woefully spelled it all out to dad. I suppose the banks hire special people to hand out bad news to customers. She knew it was a disaster and tried her level best to soften the blow, but we were about to become homeless. It was one of the few occasions that dad was cold and sober lately. He was close to tears, pleading for an extension of time until he could land a job.

"Mr. Henderson, Please don’t think it rude of me, but it appears to me that you’ve been subjected to a series of unfortunate events since your wife passed away. If I were you, I would consider seeking a lawyer to pursue wrongful dismissal from your previous position. I don’t see how the bank could consider extending your mortgage,,, unless,,, well,,, if you do have a legitimate claim against your former employer, a pending settlement may be sufficient grounds to"

"There’s nothing wrong with me lady! All I need is a job! No lawyer’s going to get his hands on my house by attaching a claim to it for huge fees. They got lawyers, too. When I got my walking papers they told me not to bother filing any petitions to sue them, or they’d blackball me and their lawyers could drag the case out in court for years. I won’t get a dime. All I need is some time to reorganize. Is that asking too much? I paid that mortgage regularly for nearly twenty years. Now that I’ve had bad luck, you want to pull the rug out from under me.

You can give me a break, can’t you Mrs. Morgan? What’re a few measly months? There’s plenty of equity. Add the interest to the balance until I get back on my feet again. Donny is going to get a job after school. With his help and the check from unemployment, we can break even until I’m back to work. A working stiff like me is supposed to be able to get help from a bank when he needs it."

"Mr. Henderson, may I call you Jim?"

"Sure. Anything you’d like. What’s the difference? All you want to do is join the crowd. Add another spike into my coffin. Take our house away, and the county will take Donny away from me. Is that what you want? The kid needs me and all you want to do is yank the carpet out from under our feet! You’re all alike!"

"Look, Mr. Henderson! Up until now, I’ve been trying to be polite. You seem to want to play hardball, so I’ll make this as plain and clear as I can. You’ve had two auto accidents, and lost your license and insurance for driving under the influence. At present, four creditors seeking the information as to your financial responsibility have approached the bank. You haven’t paid anything on your credit cards for nearly six months and you listed your house as collateral on the credit card applications.

The bank is at risk. You’ve consumed more equity in your home than you have. Surely, without a car or job, you didn’t spend two thousand dollars last month on groceries? What will the county say when they inquire into your social habits? Is your son going to lie for you, when they ask him about what kind of purchases came to two thousand dollars? I believe you have a drinking problem, or worse. You look like you’ve been on a binge for months. One look at you, and the county will seize your assets and put Donny in a foster home. Is that plain enough?"

"Okay! Take the damn house! What choice do I have?"

"We don’t want to take the house. We want you to take our advice!"

"And get blackballed?"

"I think your reputation is already beyond worrying about. You were once a heavy producer in your field, a good man for any employer to have. You made a good living, saved, and have been a good customer at the bank for decades. Tell me how many potential employers have shown the slightest interest in hiring you lately, with all the background and sales experience you offer?"

"Things are slow. It’ll turn."

"Things aren’t slow, Jim. We know. We have a lot of customers. Times are good. You don’t have a job, because you’ve been blackballed. Your last employer let you go. Do you think he’d give you a good referral so you could take the client base you developed over years to a competitor? If you did, how long would you last in a new firm? Long enough for them to grab the client base before they send you walking again? Face it, Jim. You’re between a rock and a hard place."

"What can I do? No one wants me. Do we have to have Donny hear all this? He doesn’t need to hear you run me down. Does he?"

"Whoa! Let’s get this straight, Jim. Donny is the primary reason I haven’t shown you the door. I knew his mom. She ran the household finances and made the payments on the mortgage like clockwork. Donny was her pride and joy. If you were involved, you’d know she put a few dollars away for him in savings with the bank as trustee. No, if you knew, you would have tried to tap that out, too.

What I don’t want Donny to see is the loss of his home due to your excess. In a few years, when he’s on his own, I could care less if you drink your life away. I’ve been in his shoes. I lost my mom, and my dad because of their careless abuse of alcohol. I had my dad’s family to rely on. They raised me. Donny doesn’t. If I can prevent Donny’s ending up in an orphanage or foster home, I’m willing to extend your mortgage for three more months, but only if you agree to seek professional help. I’ll review your file again at that time to determine if you’ve made progress. Bankers aren’t as cold-hearted as you think. We care about customers unless they don’t, and you don’t seem to care much about Donny’s future. Do you?"

"Don’t kid yourself, Mrs. Morgan! I do care! You’re damned right I care! If I have to crawl on my knees to some blood-sucking lawyer, I will. Is that what you want? I guess I don’t have much choice. I might as well give away the house’s equity to one of them. The creditors will only grab it, anyhow."

"Be careful how you talk about lawyers, Jim. I’m a lawyer, too. That’s why I know you need professional advice. You have a solid case against your last employer. I’m not in practice for myself, because I choose to work here at the bank. I still understand the legal parameters of work-related substance abuse. My primary concern is to protect the surety position of the bank. If you lose your home, the foreclosure process may consume much or all of the equity you have and put the bank at risk. The expenses incurred to protect its position will further erode your equity. You guaranteed to absorb litigation costs when you signed the mortgage. This bank doesn’t relish losing good accounts to satisfy a list of creditors. We’d rather see you recover and be able to continue to pay off all your debts.

If you’d like, I can recommend a good attorney who specializes in employment issues. He’s a friend, but he’ll work directly for you, not the bank."

"Is that all? All I have to do is agree to hire some friend of yours?"

"No, that’s not all! And you don’t have to hire anyone I recommend! I was trying to help! Obviously, you think otherwise! Good Day, Mr. Henderson!" She had him cornered. She knew it. So did dad.

"No! Wait! I didn’t mean it to sound like that! I’ll do whatever you say. I appreciate your assistance. No one likes to admit they need a lawyer. I’ve never had to do anything like this before. I don’t know any lawyers. Please, reconsider. I need your help. Whatever you say, I’ll do."

"Well. Before you commit to accepting the offer of an extension of time to resolve your mortgage deficiency, you’d better hear me out. Getting a lawyer is only the beginning. He’ll ask a lot of questions; then decide if the case is worth pursuing. If it is, you will have to agree to follow his advice, to the letter. Frequently, in a situation like this, you will have to submit to clinical rehabilitation.

The suit will be filed to recover rehabilitation costs and the lost income from your wrongful dismissal. If your employer is prudent, he carries insurance and he’s been salting away the commissions you would have been paid from sales to your accounts and has been keeping meticulous records as to how much they would owe you. They may also be liable for criminal duress for trying to dissuade you from filing for a wrongful dismissal claim. They did threaten you, didn’t they?"

"Well, not really. The boss didn’t. One of the other salesmen told me they’d give me trouble if I put up a stink and cut off my hospitalization."

"Why would another salesman do that? Did he approach you, or did you find out in passing, by having a casual conversation with a fellow sales employee?"

"He came to me. I wasn’t talking to the guy. He got a lot of my accounts when I was assigned to the shipping department. You see, I was feeling low after Susan passed away, and I was tied up with settling up things with the doctors, the"

"So you were reassigned for not servicing your customers during a period of grief. Did the company tell you that your reassignment was temporary?"

"No, they said they understood, and put me in shipping so I didn’t have to go out of town, that’s all. No one spelled it out. I thought they were doing me a favor."

"Did a supervisor ever discuss your social habits with you? Did they recommend that you seek medical assistance for your drinking?"

"Yeah. In shipping, I was warned that if I didn’t straighten up, I’d be canned."

"That’s all? No one approached you to say your performance was impaired by an involuntary lack of self-control that they felt required medical supervision?"

"No. One day, they told me they had enough. I missed too many days."

"From what you’ve told me, you have a valid case, in my humble estimation. How effective your remedy is depends on the accuracy of what you just told me, and the willingness of your former employer to litigate, settle monetarily or provide adequate assurance to reinstate you in your sales position with retention of your seniority and all of your accumulated earnings and benefits.

Either way, you may have considerable compensation damages to seek from them. I think you’d be wise to file a lawsuit. Do you wish me to provide you with a list of legal specialists, or shall I initiate foreclosure?"

"I’d appreciate the list, but wouldn’t know one lawyer from another. I had no idea. Could you kind of put a checkmark next to your friend’s name? I’d rather use someone who has strong ties to the bank. It’s the bank’s problem, too."

"The bank can’t show a preference. That would be unethical. I can tell you whom I would use, personally, though. Understand, that it would be my personal choice, not the bank’s recommendation."

"That’s good enough for me."

After dad’s litany of gratitude to Mrs. Morgan, we left. I had to use the potty bad. The greasy fries and burgers we had for dinner percolated inside me. My seat in her office was far enough away. I was glad because I was able to sneak a few "silent wonders" out. I hoped she didn’t get a whiff of them from where she was sitting. I couldn’t help it.