Intervention

Last evening, I came face to face with my wild, out of control teenage nephew, who, by the way, is even worse off than Noah let on.

Neil had changed into his workout clothes. "I'm going to exercise," he told me.

"No," I told him, "you are going to stand right here and listen to me until I tell you to move. Do you understand?"

He smacked his lips and protested as much as he could, but in the end he did what I said.

"Neil, I got a look at your report card. You're failing! I guess you are failing, if you don't even go to school."

"What are you talking about?"

"Neil, you know DAMNED well what I'm talking about! How are you gonna pass your classes if you blow 'em off?"

"Bassy told ya, didn't he? I knew it!"

"Bassy didn't HAVE to tell me. You forget, I went to that school. You forget, I still have contacts over there. So both you and Bassy can try to lie to me, but you won't get away with it."

"Who you think you are? You ain't my mama."

"You're right, Neil. I'm not your mother. But you can be DAMNED sure I'm not going to let you slide into the depths."

Neil is so bad off that my dad (who, by the way, is worried sick about him) is considering desperate, desperate action. He's considering taking temporary custody of him and straightening him out while he has him. I'm not sure dad is thinking clearly, and I'm not sure he's the one to straighten Neil out. He needs a strict military-style boot camp type thing.

So I put his ass thru a mini boot camp of my own. Since he was getting ready to work out anyway, I worked his ass out till he dropped.