CMLVI

Involuntary celibacy

As others have said, it’s just not great for the car. Will it damage it if you hit one? Probably not. But if it’s your work route or other commonly taken route, you’re gonna hit it 260x in a year, and you’ll own the car for multiple years. It adds up quick. Plus, they aren’t always smooth to the ground or free of other pot holes and square edges. If you hit it hard enough or if it’s too sharp, jagged, or deep, you can damage the wheel, the suspension, and the tire itself, easily in the thousands of dollars to repair, along with not having a vehicle for up to a few weeks.

Don’t get me wrong, they shouldn’t really be swerving all over the road, but dodging em when you can is nice.

Surprisingly, most of the time, no. It was a lot of glorified babysitting, with some conflict resolution every now and then, and then very rarely actual dangerous stuff. Frustrating, absolutely, because you’re dealing with teenaged boys who have, generally, grown up pretty independently and have a chip on their shoulder. It is a lot of mental stuff; frustration on why you can’t reach one of them, or what you could have done differently in a certain situation, and a lot of emotional availability with basically strangers who absolutely will use it against you when given the chance (not every time, but when they’re mad, 95% of the time it’s gonna get real personal real fast). That’s just how they’ve learned to operate, and you gotta show them a better way. Usually doesn’t stick, but it’s nice when it does.

Honestly, doubt it. We didn’t have many successful outcomes, cause we were only there until they were released or they aged out of the system. And that doesn’t kill gang ties, or easy money. But there were a few that I think got out and did well, and those are the ones I think about from time to time.

I worked in juvenile detention (in a, let’s say probationary setting) in a step-down unit kinda set up like a halfway house. You get out of jail, but are still supervised 24/7 and subject to the same rules and such, but live in a house, can get a job, family visits, etc. One client I had, we had to almost recommit him to jail because he lost phone privileges over something stupid and was freaking out because he couldn’t talk to his AI girlfriend. And this was like 2019, so it wasn’t even really AI like we know it currently, it was just a chat bot. Guy was so deep into the weeds he was convinced that it was developing feelings and divulging “personal” details and such to him. It would be funny if not for how serious he was, and I’m suelre it has only gotten worse.