It's 7:39 p.m. and I have not left work yet. I stayed to wait for a parent drive 3 hours to come talk to his only son. His son is part of a program through DJJ (the Department of Juvenile Justice) which says he must be successful at camp or else he will be locked up in training school (Juvi) until he is 18. He is 15 now.

The reason why his dad wanted to come up is because his son has hit two campers in the last week. One in the face, the other in the chest. He has a pattern of threats and violence--throwing logs, breaking doors, kicking things, etc. I personally wanted the kid out of here. But my superiors thought otherwise. My reasoning was that in the 6 months this kid has been at camp, he hasn't done shit, and now he's starting to hit people. There reasoning was that kids have hit other kids in camp before and they haven't been exited. After sitting in tonight's meeting with the kid and his dad, perhaps my judgment was a bit hasty.

Like I said, dad drove 3 hours after work just to come talk to his kid. He used logic, Wal-Mart, Bill Gates, the Bible, and various emotional pleas to try to get through to his son. He talked about a couple of his neighbors who had sons his age. He said he had to hold back the tears as he watched one of these dads take his son out in the car and go through the process of teaching him how to drive. Why did these dads, who don't even serve God get this privilege? And he, a servant of God, has to sit at home wondering when he's going to get the call that his son has been sent to training school for the next three years.

As I sat and listened to him, I felt nothing. I wondered to myself how it must feel to have watched a son grow up before your eyes, to have tried to teach him everything you know what to teach, and then to sit helpless as you watch him make bad choices that might ruin the rest of his life. What love and care, beyond measure, must a father feel toward his son! Never giving up, never without hope, always ready to run with open arms to embrace this wayward youth.

And here I was feeling aggravated because I had to stay at work late.

I don't know much at all.