Betsy and Bluffy

I ran into Mikey at the gym.  He told me his wife’s sister Betsy had dropped a bundle at the casino and was in danger of losing her home.  Mikey’s mother-in-law wanted all the kids to kick in $500 to help Betsy save her house and pay her bills.  She had told the family she didn’t know what she might do if Betsy and her kids had to move back home. 

“The kid with the gambling problem is named ‘Betsy’?” I asked.

“Her name is Elizabeth.  They called her Beth until she was twelve and discovered poker.  She used to play with her uncles who started calling her Betsy. The name stuck.”

Mikey’s wife, Suzanne, had called her brother Sam to get his advice.  Sam, the brother the rest of the family referred to as the Aloof Goof, said he wasn’t giving Betsy a dime and she shouldn’t either.  He also said they should call her mother Bluffy, because she would likely call Suzanne with vague suicide threats.  Sure enough Suzanne’s mother had called Suzanne the same day.  She told Suzanne if she couldn’t get her kids to help each other, she had failed as a mother and might be better off dead. 

“Ken, Suzanne knows giving Betsy money is the wrong thing to do, but God love her, she’s not Sam.  She’s gonna have a hard time not giving in.”

I thought about how much courage doing the right thing takes when people around you are pushing you to do the opposite.

“Sad, but peer pressure doesn’t end in high school,” I said.

Today I won’t give in to peer pressure.

Life on Life’s Terms II © 2015 by Ken Montrose