Well, I dropped Rye off at his fishing tournament bright and early this morning.  It’s a beautiful day here so he should have a good day and I now have some time to myself to piddle as Don is out of town visiting family for the weekend.

As I was driving to the lake I couldn’t help but think that I am a bit concerned these days about keeping Rye on the straight and narrow.   He’s about to turn 13 and he’s definitely getting to that period of life where him and his friends are starting to get a bit wiley.  I mean, they are good kids.  They all pray and all seem to have a good connection to God but still, they are easily sidetracked.  And the night before last a bunch of them spent the night at one of the friend’s house and apparently had quite a time.  And stayed up very late.  Call me a cynic but I can’t imagine that was a tale of purity.

I guess it’s true that if Rye was any old Joe kid with any old Joe steady-Eddy parents I probably would not be too concerned.   I mean, kids will be kids and teens will be teens and Rye has had a great deal of freedom over the years and still continues to have a lot and has always made good decisions so far.  However, I liked excitement in my teen years and Rye’s dad, BigB, was off the charts.  Beginning young and throughout his life he has really struggled with drugs and alcohol, has been to jail many times, and has been to prison.  So, not to overestimate the impact of genetics or anything but it is something to keep in mind.   It would be ignorant not to.

Anyway, as I was driving and thinking I looked to my left and there it was.  An AA house.  Alcoholics Anonymous.  A whole stand alone house just for their meetings.  It even had a sign out front designating it as such.  And there were a bunch of men out front smoking and chatting.  Now, I’m going to be honest, we have lived in this area for many years and I have never seen an AA house anywhere.  And now here we are out in what seems like the middle of nowhere, on the one day in a long time I have even been mulling this issue over in my mind,  and there it was.   Well, of course I took it as a sign.  How could one not?  This didn’t happen by accident.

So I decided,  I am going to take Rye to a few AA meetings and let him see how this all plays out of you aren’t careful or start making bad decisions.  Maybe he could hear some stories of people hitting bottom and what it took to recover and all that that entails.   He’s definitely the type of kid that needs to see things up close and personal and hear the stories straight from the horse’s mouth or he’s not buying it.

Maybe it will have an impact.  Maybe it won’t.  Maybe I don’t need to worry about it all that much.  Maybe he’s got the sense to make good decisions without this kind of exposure.  Maybe he doesn’t.  Who knows.  I do know it can’t hurt him.   It won’t hurt him to go to a few meetings.  And it might really help him.

Preventative measures, I tell myself, preventative measures.