He Was Drug Addled

In 2009 I hired a workman whom someone at a church I attended had referred to me. I hoped that the workman would work out because I had several days worth of household repairs to be done on my sixty-year old house, and I had already hired and fired some amazingly incompetent workmen in the year and a half that I had owned it. The repairs that I needed done were basic repairs that are easy for a handyman but were frankly impossible for an elderly woman as too heavy, too high up, or requiring too much strength, such as: replace the mailbox, tighten the front door bell screws into the brick, tighten the support bolts on the lawnmower, rehang a loose window shutter, and so forth.

When his elderly parents dumped him off at my house their expression said quite clearly that they were hoping that I would keep him. They did not actually boot him out of the car, but it seemed that way. The forty year-old workman stood passively and seemed somewhat disoriented when I gave him my repair list for a half day of work in the garage and on the exterior of my house. I assured him of a very good wage, and he seemed to agree to do the work. I was dismayed but I hoped for the best. Then I left to pick up the new mailbox that he would install.

That self-indulgent workman did so much drugs in the forty minutes that I was gone that when I returned he was sitting stultified on the floor of my garage like a two hundred pound primate with his unused tool belt discarded at his feet. I immediately went inside to call his parents to come get him, I locked the house door to the garage, and the druggie waited witlessly for twenty minutes on the floor until his parents picked him up. They were ashamed and did not speak to me, just hustled him into their car. Watching them through the living room window I could see that he pleased with himself, his parents, not so much. I only lost time on some repairs on my house, his parents had lost a functional son. I was sorry and embarrassed for the parents, but I was disgusted with the worthless workman.

My impression is that much of America's unemployed are drug addled.

Caption: He Was Drug Addled.

by Annmarie Throckmorton 2019