Snake Bit

Snake Bit is a term that you are probably familiar with.  No, not in the literal sense.  It is used to signify that a person has an unusual amount of bad things happen to them.  And it seems to keep happening over and over.  As much as I hate to say it, it seems my youngest son may be snake bit.  I won't go into every detail that has happened to him but just to give you an idea of what he has faced over the years I will give you an idea.

It started when he began driving.  He had an old Ranger pick up, but with most kids that age he also had a good stereo in it.  So he carried a big pouch of CD's for his listening pleasure.  There were over 100 CD's in that thing.  He bought most of them with money he had earned working at a restaurant, then a grocery store and finally Hobby Lobby.  One night he went to a movie with friends and when he returned to his truck it had been broken into.  The only thing taken was that pouch of CD's.  Not a big deal but it cost him.  Then it happened again somewhere else, he lost much more in a backpack.

After he moved out, his new Ranger truck got broken into at his apartment.  Not just once but more than 10 times.  After once or twice he left it unlocked with nothing in it.  The unlocked idea was to keep them from breaking the lock on the door.  Several times with it being unlocked they still jacked the lock up.  He would come out to his truck and find that it had been rifled through, the glove box and the console.  There was nothing to take so he lost nothing.  Then the low lifes tried to steal the truck and jacked up the steering column.  These things caused several trips to the shop for repairs to the door lock and the steering column/ignition switch.  

During all this time he had a friend get kicked out of his house and he had no place to go.  He offered him his place to stay.  I tried to give him some advice about that, but he wouldn't hear it.  The guy stayed with him for several months eventually finding a job.  They were getting along great and had plans to move to another larger apartment as roommates.  Then one night this guy didn't come home. 

This is when he discovered that he was missing some things.  As he started checking around, he was missing a lot of things.  As it turns out, this guy had been in jail overnight.  Longer story short, they cut ties.  He lost over $15K worth of items from this guy fencing his things to support a pain pill addiction.  How do you lose that much without noticing?  Well, my son was a collector of various things.  He kept these things in places you don't look everyday.  So it was pretty easy for this guy to pull the wool over the eyes of his 'friend' that trusted him.  No, insurance wouldn't cough up a cent. Since he was a 'roommate' he wasn't covered.  My older son, who is in the insurance business even wrote out an appeal that he was pretty sure would work, it didn't.  More hard lessons learned.

He lived close to work so he never put a lot of miles on this new Ranger truck.  Over the last few months his truck has started acting up.  Unusual for a truck with so few miles, but it was happening.  I recommended a shop I used to use and had great results.  That was many years ago and apparently they are now crooks.  They soaked him for about 1600$.  It didn't fix it.  He took it back and they changed some things no charge and told him some BS story what went wrong.  He is not at all mechanically inclined, he is more the artist type.  That fix didn't work either.  Took it back again and they did who knows what but gave him an estimate of $4k to fix it.  They didn't really know what was wrong and were just going to replace parts and hope for the best.  

He found a friend of a friend that was a mechanic and this guy found out was wrong.  He actually had bad piston.  He came up with a temporary fix and was back on the road.  

He sold the truck yesterday, after experiencing another issue that left him stranded and had to have it towed.  Instead of sinking more into a truck that is almost 10 years old, he decided to cut his losses. Now he will have to find a new ride and deal with payments he doesn't need.  

I am not even mentioning the work issues and the broken hearts he has bad from women with too much baggage.  There are even more incidents that will make you roll your eyes but I will stop here.

In all this he has learned some valuable lessons, while not getting down about it.  We were talking about this a bit and I mentioned that he could sure stand to catch a break.  He said that in all this, at least one thing he takes away that keeps his sanity, 'it's just stuff.'  He is pretty bright and has a good heart, he will be alright.

Happy Trails