Chapter 78: How About I Just Give You The Name?

May 3, 1997, Chicago, Illinois

“Happy Birthday, Jess!” I exclaimed when we woke up early on Saturday morning.

“Happy Birthday!” Kara added immediately.

“Maybe I should call in sick and stay in bed with the two of you all day!” Jessica replied, yawning and stretching.

“Right, because YOU think so little of your job,” I challenged.

“Well, no, but the thought was fun!”

“Don’t worry!” Kara declared. “We’ll make sure we have to carry you to work tomorrow morning!”

We got out of bed, and after quick showers, Kara and I walked Jessica to the hospital, and then returned home where I cuddled Birgit for a bit before we went to the kitchen to help Kara prepare breakfast. We ate breakfast with the rest of the family, and then Kara, the girls, and I headed to the dojo.

“Sensei Steve! We have ten people signed up for the class!” Hannah said excitedly when I walked in.

“Excellent,” I replied. “We can double our salaries! And good morning.”

“Sorry,” Hannah laughed. “Good morning, Sensei! And twice zero is still zero!”

“So it is,” I grinned. “You know that Sensei Jim supports himself with his editing, not with the dojo.”

“Somehow I don’t think karate is the way to significant wealth.”

“Not earthly riches, that’s for sure. But there is way more to life than money.”

Hannah smiled broadly and rubbed her stomach over where her baby was developing, “I know.”

“Today we’re working with the students who are going to compete for Memorial Day.”

“OK. When does Will leave for Japan?”

“June 7th. Literally the day after school is out. He’ll be back on August 16th.”

Hannah lowered her voice, “Seven weeks away from Marcia? They’ll both go stir crazy!”

“‘I have no recollection, Senator‘,” I grinned.

“Which ‘Clancy’ movie was that?”

“Clear and Present Danger,” I grinned. “Will and Marcia had to disclose they were dating, but beyond that, to quote someone even MORE famous - ‘I know nothing!‘,” said, of course, with a ‘Sergeant Schultz’ impersonation.

“I watched those in reruns,” Hannah grinned. “My dad loved them. I never found it nearly as funny as he did. MASH was more my style.”

“It was OK except for the preachy anti-war messages they put in to satisfy Alan Alda.”

“But YOU are anti-war!” Hannah protested.

“I am, but I don’t need to be preached to, and neither does anyone else!”

She laughed and shook her head, “Because YOU never preach, ever!”

“Do as I say, not as I do?” I asked sheepishly.

“I bet THAT goes over big with your kids.”

“I think we should line up,” I replied.

“Uh-huh,” she said with a smirk.

We went to line up for exercises, and in what was a very rare occurrence, I was called on to lead warm-ups. After that, Hannah, Will, and I worked with Jolene, Marcia, Emily, and Felipe, who was competing in the ‘Senior Division’, which was restricted to those 62 or older. I felt he had a reasonable chance, now that he had advanced to purple belt, drawing him even with Birgit, who was slowly working her way to 3rd kyu and a brown belt.

After a successful training session, Kara, my girls, and I walked home. We had lunch, then began the preparations for Jessica’s birthday party, which would be a combined Guys’ and Girls’ Night. When we’d discussed what she preferred, she’d decided she’d rather stay home with our friends, and Kara and I had quickly agreed. Jess wouldn’t get much sleep, but she’d worked on no sleep during the initial years of her Residency.

We had a busy afternoon of preparation, which included the girls baking several cakes, which I wouldn’t get to taste, and me preparing the grill and the ‘Texas barbecue’ sauce for which Jessica had given me a recipe. Ribs would be our main course, but we were also making hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids, or any adults who didn’t want to eat ribs.

When it was time to get Jessica, we left Birgit in charge of the house, and quickly walked to the ER where we only had to wait about three minutes before Jessica came out. We greeted her with hugs and kisses, and then the three of us started home hand-in-hand-in-hand, though with Jessica in the middle, instead of our usual configuration with me in the middle.

“Quiet day?” I asked.

“Two major traumas, both requiring surgery, but I did manage to get in a 30-minute nap.”

“How did those go?”

“They both made it, though the second one was touch-and-go, because he had an undiagnosed abdominal aortic aneurysm. Throw in hypertension and alcohol, and the man is lucky to be alive. Malik and a vascular surgeon are working on him now.”

“Drunk driving?”

“Yes. Fortunately, the only victim besides him was a light pole on 58th. Tom’s company brought him in, but Tom is off today.”

“His shift starts tomorrow the same time yours does.”

“Are people at the house?”

“Your dad and Belinda, the Jaegers, Quinns, Cindi, Eve, Kimmy and Gerry, and Deborah and Krissy. I expect quite a few more will be there before we get home. The ribs are smoking and your ‘secret recipe’ barbecue sauce is in Tom’s and Kurt’s capable hands at the moment.”

“And I’ll be in yours and Kara’s capable hands after midnight?”

“Count on it!” I promised. “And our tongues, and any other part you need!”

“Think anyone would notice if you joined me in the shower?”

“Birgit is the Mistress of the House, and she’ll notice, and tease us about it. And so will anyone else who notices, but they won’t care.”

We ended up not joining our guests until just before 7:00pm, and just as we walked outside, Kurt and Tom announced the ribs were ready. Everyone ate their fill, and afterwards, there was cake and ice cream, and to my surprise, for me, some dark chocolate which Kara had purchased with Jessica’s approval. It wasn’t very sweet, but I enjoyed it very much. We had a wonderful time that evening with dancing, music, and a lot of talking, and, when our guests had left, Kara and I gave Jessica the birthday gift she TRULY desired.

May 4, 1997, Chicago, Illinois

“I’m going to skip the Rap Session today,” Kara said as we made lunch on Sunday. “Monica called earlier and she’s bringing Amelia by so I can help her study for her science test later in the week.”

“I’d suggest using my study,” I replied. “In my opinion, neither Monica nor Amelia is ready for the kinds of topics we discuss in the Rap Sessions.”

“That’s for sure. I’d say Amelia’s social development is about on par with Rachel’s, and Rachel is twelve.”

“I kind of had that idea,” I said. “Is Bethany still meeting with Amelia?”

“Yes, and we’re going to get Amelia together with Summer and a couple of her friends. They’re all fairly conservative and it shouldn’t be too much culture shock.”

“You’re sure about that?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kara said with a knowing smile. “I’m sure. Did Birgit tell you Tiffany and Rachel will be here? They’ll be down in the basement.”

“OK. And Albert is with Dave’s kids, and the girls are out with Winter. Did Amelia pass her math and English tests?”

“Math yes; English she doesn’t have the results, but I think she passed. Honestly, her biggest issue is going to be integration because her social skills are so retarded for someone who is seventeen.”

“It reminds me of some of the Grace Church kids back in High School, though they mostly weren’t quite as sheltered because they went to public school. Amelia is an example of what happens when you’re only allowed to associate with other members of your cult.”

“If my dad could have figured out a way to send me to a private, Christian school he probably would have, but the only one close was too expensive, and he’d NEVER have sent me to a Catholic school.”

I chuckled, “There was more sex, and there were WAY more pregnancies, at McNicholas than Milford, and we had lots of sex and lots of pregnancies!”

“LOTS of sex!” Kara smirked.

“You and Dad?” Birgit asked, coming into the kitchen.

“Yes!” Kara replied. “Lunch is ready.”

The three of us ate, then cleaned up the kitchen. We’d just finished when Tiffany and Rachel arrived, and the three girls disappeared into the basement. Monica and Amelia arrived a few minutes later, and once Kara and Amelia were settled in my study, Monica left. Not long after that, the members of the Rap Session began arriving.

“I had a long talk with my dad about what you said about teenagers,” Liv said when we sat down. “He told me he didn’t think I should come to these, but my mom thought it was OK.”

“What was your dad’s complaint?” Becka asked.

“That Steve was putting ‘subversive’ ideas into my head.”

Henry laughed, “Steve IS putting subversive ideas into your head! That’s the entire point of these sessions!”

“And it was people who were born around the time your dad was, or just before, who had the slogan ‘Question authority’!” Ben added.

“I’m guessing your dad was born around 1955?” I asked.

“1956,” Liv replied.

“So he would only have been fourteen in 1970, which means he basically missed out on 60s radicalism.”

“He grew up in Nebraska,” she replied. “My mom grew up in California.”

“And that’s a perfect example of two very different upbringings. I lived in California until I was nine, then ended up in Ohio, by way of Arizona. My parents thought California was a bad place to raise kids because of how crazy it was.”

“I get the idea my mom did some crazy things when she was a teenager.”

“Most of us who are older did, too,” Elizabeth said. “Though a few waited until college. I suspect your schools are pretty conservative.”

There was general agreement, which didn’t surprise me as all the kids went to either one of the two local High Schools or a Catholic High School, and none of them was anything like Milford.

“Did you have trouble with your parents?” Holly asked.

“And then some,” I replied. “My mom believed that mental and emotional abuse were the key features of child rearing. Unfortunately, my dad let her get away with it until I was about sixteen. Unfortunately, that only attenuated the problem. I didn’t really escape it until I moved to Chicago to go to IIT.”

“Would you share something she did?” Leah asked.

“When I was seventeen, I was with a friend, who was cooking dinner for me. We were in an apartment owned by another friend of mine. My mom saw my car outside, and came into the building and was pounding on doors screaming like a crazy woman trying to find me.”

“Shacked up?” Benji asked.

“At that point, the girl and I weren’t involved that way. She just liked cooking dinner and I liked having her cook dinner.”

“Do you mind sharing another example?” Leah asked.

“I decided to become an exchange student, and right before I left for Sweden, my mom called the family in Sweden and told them that basically I was evil and rotten to the core, and that I should have no privileges, and be tightly controlled so that I basically would have to stay in the house or be in school and do nothing else.”

“That’s nuts!” Leah replied.

“That is the unanimous opinion about my mom,” I replied. “Kara can tell you stories as well.”

“You seem to have been very successful despite that,” Sean said.

“Thanks to some very important adults who acted as mentors from the time I was fourteen. I had surrogate parents, really, in my friend Melanie’s mom and dad, and a very strong mentor who was one of the two investors in the business I started when I graduated from college. He passed away not long before I married, and at that point Jessica’s dad became a mentor, though at the time I didn’t know he was her dad. And since I moved out of the house, I’ve had a very good relationship with my own dad, within limits, because he has to keep my mom happy as best he can.”

“And that’s why Steve encourages his kids to have mentors,” Patricia added.

“But he’s not like his mom!” Ally protested.

“No, I’m not,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean I have all the answers, or that my kids will want to discuss everything with me.”

“Except Birgit,” Elizabeth said with a smirk. “She’ll tell you EVERYTHING!”

“True,” I chuckled. “But even so, she has her adult friend Katy to use as a sounding board or to discuss things in a different way from what I or her moms or aunts might think.”

“Is that why you have these Rap Sessions?” Holly asked.

“Partly,” I replied. “The main reason is to expose you to things you might not hear at home or in school. And I think Liv’s comment about her mom and dad earlier makes that point fairly strongly. This is rhetorical, but ask yourself honestly, if you could talk to your parents openly about sex, or come out to them if you’re gay.”

“You obviously think it’s OK for teenagers to have sex,” Holly said. “Does that include your own?”

I nodded, “It does include my own, but what I actually think is that the only person who can make that decision is the person involved, and that society, in most circumstances, needs to butt out once someone reaches puberty.”

“Most?” Paul asked.

“There are situations where consent is impossible for all intents and purposes, say, a prison inmate and a guard. The power disparity is SO great that it’s impossible for the inmate to give meaningful consent.”

“Teachers and students?” John asked.

“Trickier,” I replied. “But easily handled by school district policy rather than threats of lengthy imprisonment. It’s the same with, say, the military. Policy and then appropriate punishment which might be reduction in rank or a dishonorable discharge. Remember, I’m not talking about actual sexual assault here, but a situation where both parties claim to consent and where the circumstances dictate that a sexual relationship isn’t conducive to ‘good order’, as my friends in the military say.”

“When should the government intervene?” Mattie asked.

“When one of the parties makes a complaint, or a responsible adult makes a complaint about a minor in their care. But once that minor reaches puberty, the government has to take into account their consent.”

“So thirteen?” Liv asked.

“We’ve bounced the number around before several times, and for me, I’d say fifteen is the point where the statement of the individual is definitive - that is, if a fifteen-year-old says they consented, that’s the end of the matter unless there is strong evidence of that not being the case, or the person was a family member, or some odd circumstance such as that.”

“So you don’t think it’s wrong for say, a forty-year-old man to be with a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“I think that’s up to her. I mostly get the idea that fifteen-year-old girls aren’t interested in forty-year-old men, but if they were, then that’s really up to them. Much of Europe has fifteen as the age of consent, and more than half the US states have sixteen. I think fifteen makes more sense, if you have to pick a specific age.

“I want to point out something very important here. According to the DSM IV - the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition - sexual attraction of adult males to teenage females is not only not a mental disorder, but is considered normal. Specifically, pedophilia is defined as attraction to prepubescents, which they define as thirteen. Think about that for a moment. We’re criminalizing behavior which is considered normal. And that leads to all KINDS of issues.

“When we start criminalizing things we don’t like which are natural, we start down a slippery slope of incarcerating people for simply being human in ways of which society doesn’t approve. A moral panic then can lead to mass incarceration for things which aren’t REALLY crimes, but are simply things about which people have become frightened. Prohibition is perhaps the ultimate example of that insanity, though the ‘War on Drugs’ comes close. The attack on smoking is a good parallel to prohibition.”

“So you think drugs should be legal?”

“The problem we have is that people are going to do it no matter what. As a society, what should our response be? I prefer one like alcohol - we punish irresponsible use, not responsible use. In other words, I can get drunk in my own house, and that’s my business. Or even at a friend’s house, if they’re OK with it. What I can’t do is drink and drive. In fact, my personal rule is not to drive if I’d had even one drink, and if I’m in a circumstance where I will have to drive without sleeping overnight, then it’s two hours plus an hour per drink, starting an hour after the last drink. So one drink means four hours from finishing the drink until I drive, which, as I said, I try to avoid.

“Let me give you another example. In California, the age of consent is eighteen, with no exceptions of any kind. Two High School kids who have consensual sex the day before their joint eighteenth birthday would be criminals, subject to up to twenty years in jail and being listed on the ‘sex offender’ registry for life. Is that sane in ANY circumstance? I daresay it isn’t.”

“So how do you decide what should be illegal?”

“Things which harm a non-participating third party or non-consenting person. That said, many of those things ought to be handled as torts - that is, you sue the person, instead of the government putting them in jail.”

“You mentioned smoking; it is really bad for you!” Leah protested.

“So is eating too many ‘Big Macs’!” Gabby replied. “Think about what happens if we go down THAT road!”

“So anything goes?” Leah asked. “Even if it’s really bad for you?”

“Eating cake or any other sweet is really bad for ME,” I replied. “I don’t have diabetes, but I have a metabolic issue which doesn’t let me eat many carbohydrates. Should I lobby to ban all carbohydrates and sugars?”

“But that’s a specific case; a medical condition,” she protested.

“My point is, life is dangerous. In fact, the statistics say that life is always fatal.”

“That’s silly!” Julie protested.

“Is it?” I asked. “Kara might not agree, but I would much rather do as I please and live a very happy life, dying at age sixty-five, than be miserable because others force me to live and act a certain way, and die at age ninety. It’s all about calculated risks. I smoke a couple of cigars a year, and a few bowls of tobacco in my pipe. I know the risks and I’m willing to take them because I enjoy them. I enjoyed skydiving until I suffered two concussions, which weren’t related to skydiving, by the way.”

“In the end,” Elizabeth said, “it comes down to who decides. You, or half the people who vote. Don’t let fear cause you to vote for government restrictions, or your desire to protect ME from myself, cause you to declare things I like to do illegal. The sources of most foolish laws are either unreasonable fear or control-freakery. I suspect some of you think your parents control your lives too much. What about you, Leah?”