But in this case, when he was done speaking with my mom, he had my brother and I join them at the dining room table. Our family always met for dinner at the dining room table, no TV, no radio, just food and discussion. So it was natural to meet there for a family talk.
My mom knew my dad would just leap to business, so seeing that my brother and I were already preliminarily worried, she interjected first that, "Everything will be okay."
My brother and I exchanged a quick glance. We each knew that this meant that whatever it was, it was not okay.
My dad explained. How as a Regional Office Administrative Services Manager for State Farm, sometimes he had to let people go. Sometimes they could be reassigned. Other times demoted. Sometimes, they had to be fired.
My brother and I knew about that. My dad fired very few people, and each time it hurt him. I mean, really hurt him, he'd do it, and he'd be all manly about it at work in front of others, but when he came home, we knew that he was always sad, and would often cried with my mother.
I inherited that from him, because I was never able to fire anyone, without crying over it later. Or nowadays, tell people they have to leave our sober living homes, without coming back home to my wife and being sad over it. And yes, crying.
He said that someone he had fired was very angry with him. That the person fired was hurt and confused and lashing out. And that he'd called our dad's office and made some threats. Threats about my father. Threats about our mom. And about my brother and I, though at 12 and 11 we'd never met this guy.
We were asked to just be aware, as we walked to school, and to tell a teacher if any strange vehicle seemed to follow us. It was the usual stranger danger speech, but tailored to the specific reality of a disturbed unemployed man wanting to make others feel as crappy as he felt.
At a precocious 12, I knew what was really bothering my dad about this. And I asked him to make sure I knew. "Work is work and home is home, and he's not following that, right?"
"Right.", my dad said, but in a tone that meant he didn't want to talk about it any more. But he had always followed that rule. Work problems are work problems, home problems are home problems, and neither is to touch the other.
And here this man was forcing my dad to have his home impacted by work. The man might never show up to harm us - and it turned out he never did - but my dad had to "touch" us, his loved ones at his home, with this work problem all the same. Not only had the man then touched us, but made it so that my dad had to participate in that violation.
This "touching home" is where some kind of disturbed stalker type focuses on you, and as they perceive in their hurt and/or bent minds that you've hurt them, so they want to hurt you. And they do this by forcing you to pay attention to them, forcing you to react to them, forcing you to have to continue to think of them and have to deal with them.
And most of all, they force you to touch home, or to try and scoot past you to touch home themselves. You thought that whatever relation you had with the stalker type was over. A dating relationship, a work relationship, a such and so relationship. In my case a "work type" relationship, wherein I had tried to aid a man addicted to crack and alcohol with getting into rehab.
He failed to stay at the rehab outside of St. Louis I drove him to. And that failure is now somehow my fault, and to boot, he also believes I owe him $50. That may not seem like much to fuss over, to some reading this, but to him it is apparently the world.
I've held money for addicts before, who didn't want it spent. The most I held was $1,300, just recently, for another person who wrestled with addiction. And he got every penny back, exactly when he was supposed to get it back. He's normal enough, he's happy with me.
But in this case, I had not held any money for this man. I had only been the guy to watch his house and feed his cat while he was at rehab. He was apparently expecting $50 cash in the mail, which either never came, or someone took, or he even spent himself.
He's saying that I have it. Thus him threatening I and my wife by text and voicemail. And showing up at our home. And showing up at our home a second time. He wanted my wife to hear about what a bad person I am, I figured, oh, he wants to tell her I took $50 from him. I nodded to my wife, who stepped all the way up to the screen door, and she said, "I'm listening."
He then accused me of a bunch of other bad stuff, nothing that had anything to do with reality, or frankly was very credible. An overkill of hate filled allegations. My wife listened in silence, as did I, and then said, when he finally sputtered out, "I've heard you. Please go."
Then he wanted to push me, admittedly not very hard. I called the police after that. He explained to me about how he was going to come by with a shotgun. I reminded him that the last person he had pulled a shotgun on had filed a police report and the gun was took. He assured me he had more guns.
He told me he'd burn my life to the ground. Eventually the police got there and trespassed him. I hoped it was over. His cousin, a nice 70 year old lady who administers this man's trust fund warned me that it was not over. Apparently he's done this to others in the past.
This morning, the Sabbath, I was at church service. All was going well. Our new minister was there. A new couple joining our church were there. I shared the good news with everyone about our 501(c)3 exemption being granted by the IRS. All was well. I was trying to fiddle with the sound system, trying to do a good job.
The stalker guy walked in. I knew that he did not have a car. I knew that he could not afford a taxi. I knew he had no friends who would give him a ride. I knew that he must have biked, in the inclement, overcast weather, from the southeast of Springfield to our church at the northwest side of Springfield. I knew that he was not there to learn of the true meaning of the Sabbath - another Adventist church is only a few blocks from his home, he would have had to pass that one to get out to ours.
I excused myself from the sound system and ducked into a Sabbath school room. I called 911. I could have waited till the inevitable disturbance, but I knew it would take 10 minutes for them to get out there. And sure enough it took twelve minutes.
One of the Elders in the church sat behind the disturbed man. In case he made any play to be harmful or disruptive. I stayed out of view, so my presence would not goad him. The police came. He was escorted out without incidence...but oh, yeah, the police were at my church. I had to miss part of the sermon that our new minister was sharing with us.
Others had their worship disturbed over the presence of police. Perhaps not by much, but still. Everyone was very kind. But still. The relapsed man's mission was accomplished. Oh, not in the sense he was no doubt telling himself. Where'd he'd grab the mike and denounce me as a thief and a cad and everything but a Christian.
I learned later that he'd been leaving ugly messages on the church's answering machine. Which then a very kindly lady, who's opinion matters to me, had to hear. She was gracious about the matter. Still, though. Still and all.
The underlying mission was accomplished, even if he had not the words a 12 year old had to articulate it. He touched home. He touched my home. My wife, my home, my church home. He reached out his dirty and angry hands and touched my home.
As I said to a friend, "What hurts is that he only knows where I go to church because when he was lonely last Thanksgiving, I invited him to our church to have lunch with us."
My father eventually, though we learned this not till a few years later, had to have police involvement to keep that guy from bothering us all further. And so on Monday I will be going to court to have some kind of order acquired whereby this man must stop trying to hurt my wife, me or my church.
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