Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 04:41:34 +0000 (UTC) From: Bob Smith Subject: My Boys Chapter 1 My Boys Chapter 1 The call came early in the morning and it wasn't totally unexpected. Would I take Curt while his mom was in prison? Although expected, it wasn't welcome. I had just moved to Florida and purchased a house near the Gulf, surrounded by fresh water lakes. I just recently sold my company up north and I was looking forward to just kicking back and enjoying the outrageous sum of money I was paid. I wasn't interested in having an eleven year old under my care. Never the less, I told the welfare official that I would think about it and let him know later that day. I knew I had no choice. Curt was alone; he had no relatives that I knew of and he was far better with me than with the foster care system. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to my privacy. I went back to bed and though what it might be like to raise him. Curt was smart and got great grades, much better than the other boys in his class. He was polite, when reminded, and was very good looking. His mom was white, and his dad black, but he never knew his dad. The combination gave him a skin texture of gold, a perpetual tan. Would raising a bi-racial kid be an issue, I wondered. In many ways, he was still a little boy and puberty was still a year or two away. All in all, he was an awesome kid who had a lot of bad breaks in life but seems to overcome them and was turning into a remarkable young man. Lastly, I had the time. Now that my company was sold, I had very little to do except lounge naked around the pool and collect my investment money. Could I do that with a kid in the house? The downside of my adopting him was the loss of my privacy. I could afford him staying with me but I wanted to travel and was not planning on taking an eleven year old with me. And then there was the sex. I was bisexual, single and still young and always horny. I wasn't sure if having a youngster in the house would interfere with my dating and bringing home my date for a night. Wild sex (or so I hoped) might be out of the question. By the time afternoon rolled around, I had decided I had no choice but to take him. I was sure other families had the same problems and they had overcome them, so why couldn't I? I called Family Service in Minnesota and asked what the next steps were. The person on the phone was polite and told me that since Curt's mom asked that I take her son, there was no red tape to go through. He was mine as soon as I came and got him. The county had secured the necessary papers making me his legal guardian, allowing me to authorize his medical care and whatever else I needed to do to insure his safety and health. In effect, his mom had signed away her parental rights and made me his dad. I made arrangements to fly to Minnesota the next afternoon and meet Curt at the Hennepin County welfare office the next day. Curt and I would both fly home that afternoon, right after I took custody of him. Flying into MSP was like flying home, no, it was flying home. I had lived here for 30 years, started my company here and developed many friendships. But my old neighborhood had drifted downward and had become a ghetto. I owned a series of rental homes and apartments in Minneapolis and my tenants were making them slums. In the early years, the kids could play in the yards and never worry about their safety. Lately, not so much! Now you could hear the gun shots almost every night. It was here that I meet Curt and his family. They were tenants of mine and lived right next door to me. As a four year old, he would drop in to see me and stay for dinner or just to watch TV. Most of the time, he didn't know where his mom was so I was his safety net. After a while, his mom just accepted that he was at my place and when she wanted him home, just knocked at the door and got him. I was the one who purchased his school supplies and school clothes. I was the one who made sure Santa visited him for Christmas. Since his mom could barely afford the rent and food, Christmas gifts were out of the question. If he needed money for school events, he would ask me if he could work in the yard and earn the money. I paid for his Little League and his swimming lessons. I think it was the lack of money that led his mom to sell drugs to make ends meet. One day she sold drug to the wrong guy and ended up in a federal prison for fifteen years. Curt was my little buddy and he was one of the few things I missed when I moved south. I arrived at the Hennepin County Service Center at nine the next morning. Curt was in a chair along the side of the room looking lost. He was sandwiched between a large woman with three tiny kids and a guy who looked homeless. All the time I gazed at him, he never looked up from staring at his shoes. He wore a battered Twins t-shirt, blue jeans two sizes too large for his small frame and sneakers that were coming apart at the bottom. A paper sack was near his chair. I walked over to him and said, "Hi, Curt. How are you doing?" He looked up. His smile lit up the room. He jumped up and put his arms around my waist and then burst out in tears. The social workers came around from his desk and said, "You must be Bob. I am glad you made it. Curt wasn't sure you would want to take him home with you in spite my telling him you were on the way." Getting through the paperwork was easy. I showed my identification; signed some papers, received papers saying I was his legal guardian and we were all set to go. I picked up the paper sack and asked Curt if it contained his clothes. He said "yes". I tossed the bag in the waste basket near a desk and said, "First stop, Target, so we can get you some clothes to wear home and then we go to the airport." Buying him clothes was like old times. I allowed him to pick out a t-shirt, a pair of blue jeans and some sneakers. I am not sure why it took so long but he had to have the right kind of characters on the front of the shirt and the sneakers had to be the right style and color. We both went into the fitting room as he tried on his new duds. He wasn't wearing any underwear but that was normal for him. He moved so quickly, I never saw any of his boy bits, just a wisp of brown butt as he slipped on his pants. When he didn't have his back to me his long t-shirt hid all the good parts. Once we determined everything fit, we paid for the goods and headed out for the airport. I told him to change in the back seat of the car as we headed south to MSP. There was no way he was going to be seen in public with his old clothes on. Two hours later we were on the plane and heading south.