Runaways, "Good" and Bad Corruption, Still Wondering Why

I'm a-walkin' in the rain
Tears are falling and I feel the pain
Watching all the plays go by
Some live and others die
And I wonder
Why

excerpt from "Runaway (Crime Story version)" by Del Shannon (1986)

 
Where is baby
  where can she be
  She's run away to find herself
  wherever that may be

She's too young
  a song barely sung
  now she is just a picture
  waiting to be hung

Her future's on dice
  naive in a land of vice
  prepared not for what is there
  among men like mice

No longer lame
  by assigning blame
  I light a torch in the underworld
  hoping she'll see the flame

In the dark
  I grow faint at heart
  as one crumpled little body
  rips my world apart

Runaways
Quadranine (1988)

    One day 4 years ago I was sitting on a curb looking at traffic cones waiting to take my motorcycle driving test in Keopulani Park on Maui in Hawaii. I could not help but to think back to sitting on a curb looking at traffic cones decades ago in Florida, both of these locations far from where I grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The polar opposite results of the tests, as I would find out mere minutes later would also lend to the juxtapositions and then see their similarities and differences, and how they intertwined.

    When I was 15 years old, days before sitting on that curb beside traffic cones for a driving test in Florida, I was at home on the Cape. I remember trying to hold a cigarette in my hand and not being able to keep it from shaking. If things keep going like this, I thought, I am going to have a nervous breakdown. I was skipping school, which was no longer a minor thing, but was the least of my worries.

    For years before that, I went to school pretty much only whenever I wanted to for some stretches. I wrote my own notes and pretty much covered my tracks so none was the wiser, taking off sometimes weeks, adding up to months. I got caught only when I confided to a teacher how screwed up I thought the school was, (it was considered objectively to be the worst in the state at that time) and told him how I got away with it for years. After that, they tended to notice when I was not there, to put it mildly.

    But neither that, nor social issues at school was why I felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and why I was about to set off for Florida on my own. Many times my parents would argue and one or the other would end the shouting match by threatening to leave and never come back and then storm out the door, get in their car, and drive off to prove their determination. They were never gone usually for more than a few hours. This time, shortly before this day I am recounting, they both did it at the same time.

    It took a few seconds or a few minutes of shock before both my younger brother and younger sister were sobbing uncontrollably, saying what if they never come back. I have been present at many such scenes but this one was one of the worst because I was the only one left there to pick up the pieces from it, and because I was only 15 at the time. Normally I would not mind being the "responsible one" but things then seemed on a never ending spiral of just getting worse. Both of them leaving at the same time, I knew this was something new, something worse, and something I could not take becoming a habit.

    One cannot leave a situation like that without feeling some guilt, what about those I am leaving behind? Am I failing by leaving? Am I just trying to save myself? I saw parallels to that to when I went to Europe in 2003 but in each case, I would never have admitted it to myself or saw it that way. The way I saw it, I was not running away, just trying to get to a place I might have some control over things instead of constantly losing control and having it harder and harder to just hold on. It is not so easy to say you are not running away, as I did when I was 15 when the legal term for what you are is a 'runaway.'

    I did my research before I left. I found a town that Florida that I though matched the demographics of Cape Cod. That was also how I decided many years later on Maui. I wanted to stick with something similar to what I knew as far as the local economy, hated cities, and liked to sit and think at the beaches about the future. That was pretty much what I did all those months when I had been skipping school the years previous to that.

    Though I was only 15, I looked a few years older, or thought I could pass, so I decided since Winter was coming on, I had to make my move now or it would be too late. I hitchhiked the first few hundred miles and then eventually went by bus through the South. With long hair and Charlie Daniel's Bands "Uneasy Rider" on my mind, as always in the South, I did not care to take my chances hitching there.

    I called my parents for the second time since I left when I got to Florida from a cheap hotel, in or near the town I decided to go to, Eagleton, near Tampa. The first time I called was from a bus station in Washington DC late at night, but did not wish to talk long or say where I was. In Florida, I was relaxed enough to let on what my plans were and say to some extent where I was.

    Luckily, the town I picked from a demographic listing of cities in Florida happened to be not many miles from where I had a cousin living in the Tampa Bay area. With money running low and no job lined up yet, I agreed to call my cousin's family and maybe meet with them. What happened next I did not see coming.

    My father, using money I had in a very small trust for when I turned 21, despite his extreme fear of flying managed to put himself on a plane and turned up in Florida less than a day later. There, at my cousins home, happened probably one of the most raw emotional scenes of my life. By the time I was done, I was in tears, my father who never ever cried except once when he lost a child, was in tears, everyone in the house was literally sobbing. I held nothing back.

    Anyone who ever had an abusive parent would have to realize how valuable a position I had found myself in. He could not hit me. He could not shout me down. He could theoretically do any of those things which were second nature, but in this instance, it would accomplish nothing. I was smart and determined enough that it was clear I could eventually leave again, disappear, and not call again if I so chose.

    For one short speech, he would have to sit there and listen, not blow up, not threaten, and just try listening. I was probably crueler than I would have wished, but I had a lot saved up. How could a parent NOT see the damage constant threatening to leave, constant arguing, and my latest unconscionable, both leaving at once in different cars saying the other would have to take care of the kids from on now because they were outta here.

    I hit him with the stereotypical, you never even said you loved me, which was true, but common for people of his generation to not talk of such things. A lot of pain was let out, a lot of raw nerves were roundly stomped upon, and then again for good measure.

    But then inevitably the question came around which I did not have an answer for, nor did he. Where now from here? The status quo was permanently off the table. Going back to school and college was my eventual goal even then, though not 100% sure of that, but I was 100% sure that that joke of a high school was not going to come up in my life again. In Elementary school, the school wanted me to move up a grade because I was usually quite ahead in comparison to the things being taught and usually was mostly bored. I got used to not doing homework or studying because it was not required and was generally a waste of time when I already knew the material. That would bite me in later grades when homework was required, percentage of the grade-wise.

    My parents however did not want me to be that much younger in my classes than I already was. As was, I would have graduated at 17 and they did not think that I should graduate at 16 instead. Plus, no doubt, they thought I might be teased or picked on for being so much younger and smaller than everyone else.

    As is, the way it worked out was simply a different type of education. At 15 I was already smarter than most adults, though admittedly, in comparison, I didn't know shi*. But that was fine, because I was a quick learner and very intuitive about people.

    The plan worked out that night and eventually played out was that I would stay at my sister's house for a few months until I could drop out of school, get my driver's license, and get a job. Florida was then, as now, a good place to get a classic car cheap. Big cars, heavy cars, are perfect for teenagers because they, far more than most, will probably be crashing into things with them. And I was no exception.

    The car I found cheap enough ($500) but cool enough was a 1970 Cutlass S fastback 2 door. I eventually over the years had 4 similar Cutlasses, all 1970 to 1972 including a '72 convertible. It became my default car, though I had many other classic muscle cars at one time or another (Camaro, Challenger, Firebirds, Mustangs, etc.) over the years.

    So getting the car back became the goal of how to return, to drive it back. Most parents would simply use their own license, but back then one was allowed to have driver's licenses in more than one state at a time so my father decided to get a Florida license to go with its Florida registration.

    Sitting on the curb at that first of the two drivers courses with traffic cones decades earlier than the second, it was quite a sight. As tense as things were at that time, I doubt many times I have ever laughed that hard, maybe as a release, or maybe because it was that funny. My know-it-all-father, who could admit no wrong if not do no wrong, absolute demolished just about every other cone in his path blathering on to the driver the whole time on what a great driver he was and how many decades he drove in. Twice. He was 60 at the time, but then that was not usually something they watched out for the way they do now, losing driving skills. The driver simply had him redo it, and eventually just gave him his license probably to just get rid of him so he would not have to endure it a third time.

    It was during that road trip back I got to know my father as a person for the first time. I would eventually go to work for him though years later, so got to know him well as an adult to an adult, and not just as a parent to a child. That trip back we came to an understanding to each  try to make this journey through life not that much harder on the other than necessary.

    Things for my younger brother and sister were changed as well. In a very short time thereafter, my mother got her own apartment and I was the one again in between. At first I lived in an apartment my father's house but when he became too much to deal with I sometimes lived in my mother's apartment, and often at neither. It took many months of work for me after my mother moved out to even get my father to go over her house simply to have a dinner there. That eventually gave way to him going there often for hours in the evening, and then going home to his own house. The cause of their tension was gone because they never really had to deal with each other when they did not want to.

    Though I dropped out of school, the apartment I lived in had years of psychology textbooks I read before eventually getting my GED and first going to college at 18. I did not have to study for the GED, it was remedial to me, and I knew years worth of psychology before I enrolled. With math I was naturally gifted, but writing at a college level took a course of college prep writing and then gradually improved. Before college, the last year which I had made it all the way through each semester was the 8th grade, so a minor learning curve was justified, though it bruised my ego a little it did not come more easily than it did. At the time I was like, a college prep writing course, how embarrassing!

     But now, years later, on to my own pathetic driving test. Looking back at the cones still upright on the motorcycle course and remembering how my father demolished the course when he tried, I think I did pretty well and actually passed on the first try. Until I didn't.

    After being congratulated on passing, the tester asked about some trouble I was having with the throttle and I mentioned that it was sticky. It would not accelerate at all for awhile when  turning it, and then it would suddenly work with a lurch. Coincidentally or not, immediately after my great or not-so-great explanation, she suddenly "remembered" a cone I had knocked over and suddenly I had not passed anymore.

    The bookend comparison was now complete. My father who should have never been passed on his performance was given a license anyway and I, would did fine, was nonetheless denied a license. I do not blame the evaluator in the least for denying me a license for the reasons I will now state. Whether to give a driver's license to someone goes beyond it just being "your job" or according to statistical test scores. It is ultimately stating you as a person think this person is qualified to drive based on what you saw.

    As horrible as my father performed that day on the test, he was indisputably a qualified driver. My answer to that question when asked gave doubts to the evaluator that I was in fact qualified to operate a motorcycle despite having done well enough on the test to obtain one. Such skirting the rules I cannot argue about because it did not end up costing me anything, nor was it done for any reason other than in the interest of me getting more practice which might have been thought to possibly save my life one day. Rules are rules but the overall goal or objective of them should not be lost as well.

    When returning the rented cycle, when asked about how it went I mentioned the sticky throttle and the business kindly allowed me to use a different moped a week later at no extra charge. Since I had plenty of vacation time saved up, getting time off was not a problem either. Oh the horrors to have to spend an extra day riding around Maui on a moped for free!

    I have worked for Maui for almost 6 years now and I have seen different kinds of corruption, what I call "good" corruption and of course the not-so-good corruption. Admittedly, it is easy and tempting to say there is no such thing as good corruption, and generally I agree, but I will press on for a bit.

    By not giving me a license, the person bent the rules a bit, though not in any way in her own interest, and if so, would have been in my best interest, if intended as such. Another instance in the same vein, when I first got back to Maui I worked for various temp agencies. One day I left some work gloves on my bicycle attached to the front of the bus by mistake and they fell off. I pleaded with the driver to let me off at an unscheduled stop so I could retrieve them even though it meant I would then miss work.

    Missing a day's work at that time was bad. It meant not eating, but I would not have been able to work without the gloves either, and then I would be billed to replace them. I would have a negative gain that day, no money, no food, and added debt. The driver then blew my mind and did the unthinkable. She apologized and informed the passengers that it would take a few minutes longer but she then turned the bus around so I could retrieve them, then continued on. With the larger buses nowadays that is unthinkable but it was pretty much unthinkable then too. She literally put her own job on the line to help someone by breaking a rule. Doing so not only benefited her not in the least, because like I said, it was a fire-able offense.

    To follow the rules is necessary. What I have said here to be "good" corruption one can argue it is no different. When rules are bent to help people, it can be hard to trace sometimes how that is benefiting someone doing the bending, though often it does. For those in power who make "someone's parking tickets" go away, or help them out with inspector's, etc., it is often done even if for a good reason, but connotating having the idea, valid or not, of gaining some unspecified favor or help in the future.

    To guard against those abuses, and they ARE abuses even when done for good reasons, it often makes societies that much uglier, harsher, and unforgiving. Though they are the frontlines for abuse and corruption: the courts; the police; the politicians; they also need to have some flexibility in sentencing, in deciding whether to give someone a ticket or a warning, or to help a constituent. This "flexibility" will always be abused by some but to throwaway personal discretion as I said, that opens up a worse alternative, where all morality and goodness is only that which is expressedly permitted and formally written into laws and codes. And these give the only compassion or discretion possible. And these are often abusive by definition having been written by interest groups for interest groups and we the people are often an afterthought at best.

    Oversight is important, and Lord knows the graft machine in Washington needs oversight, but that oversight needs to be done by independent review boards with the public's interest in mind. As I have said before the law has not only been "bent" recently, laws and truth literally have been tortured just as much as people have been recently. Such oversights need to not be left to clever lawyers whose abilities to obfuscate and distort the meaning and purposes of laws for which they receive by far the highest paychecks for those abilities. Nor judges, often political hacks.

      Sandra Day O'Connor recently put forth that citizen review boards be elected to oversee the overseers. She meant in the selection of judges but it could also be done for laws or political bodies incapable of overseeing their own corruptions. But such a solution would only work if the laws and means to define them, and how they are currently applied and redefined in secret, again becomes literally public knowledge. Fail on that count and no solution will matter because no one will ever be able to realize just how much needs to be done, or how much or how often the current system is failing us.