Patos Locos

My mom has this deep seated belief that counseling is bogus. She thinks we're all equipped to deal with our own shit, if you will. It's just a matter of tapping into that inner-power to fight through those dark days. Along those lines, she doesn't believe in addiction either. I witnessed her quit smoking in one day without a patch after lighting up for fifteen years. Despite my best efforts to convince her that addiction exists and counseling is helpful, she maintains that everything in life is a question of mind over matter. Based on her resilience it's difficult to argue with her...

Since 1984 my mom has experienced quite a bit beginning with the passing of my younger sister, who was my "Irish twin." We were born eleven months apart. A year removed from that, she was involved in a car accident that resulted in the death of a very good friend. Her father died seven years later unexpectedly in Haiti. Ten years after that, her mother passed away after a long bout of dealing with diabetes. The Grim Reaper then came for my father two years later. I almost forgot to mention that she lost a very good friend to cancer right around the time her father passed on. Although life has sought to drive my mother crazy, without medication or counseling, she has yet to crack.

"Loco" is a Bubblee I worked with here. He was a very athletic forward from a single parent home. Loco also had some learning disabilities. One time I asked him to read a paragraph in my office and it took him ten minutes to do it. Beyond this learning disability he was also very angry. After a dispute with a teammate, for instance, he kicked in his car door. In high school, he followed a visiting team's bus for forty minutes because one of the guys was talking smack during the game. Loco's anger issues stemmed mostly from his father not being around, and other kids making fun of him during his childhood about everything from his mother being obese to not having much.

Flash had a lot of bad news for me when we reconnected. In addition to quitting the basketball team, he also dropped out of school in favor of a job at Rent-a-Center. He also had yet to see his other son who lives fifteen minutes away. The other piece of bad news he shared with me had to do with Loco.

Me: Have you seen or spoken to anybody from last year's team?
Flash: Yeh. I was with Loco like two weeks ago. He the only one I still mess with like that from the team. That was my dude. You know that.
Me: How's he doing? He doesn't return my calls.
Flash: Coach, man. This dude is on some stuff, yo!
Me: Stuff like what?
Flash: So I went to go check him out around his way and as we talkin about stuff, he started buggin out the blue.
Me: How so?
Flash: Everything was cool, right. We was kickin it, then he was like, you wanna fight me, huh? I thought he was playin, but he kept at it.
Me: What? Fight? Did you say or do anything? 
Flash: Nah. Not at all. I was like, yo, you need to chill out. You sound kinda serious. He was like, nah, I'm just playing. So anyway, later on while i was driving he told me to stop the car, so I stopped.
Me: And??
Flash: He got out the car and told me to step out so we could fight! Nothing happened for him to be actin' like that. We wasn't drinkin or nothin, Coach!