Reply #26: Well, I guess that would also depend on what you consider to be [View All]

[MissMillie]

a "contribution" to society.

I grappled with this a while ago:

One late afternoon when I was much younger and living at home w/ my parents, I was making arrangements to go out for the evening in Boston, some 60 miles from my home. The sky was getting dark and it looked like it was going to rain. I was worried because I needed new wiper blades and I didn't know how to put them in. I asked my Dad to help. He got pretty upset. Not that he didn't have time to do it, or that he didn't want to do it (he was concerned about my safety too). The fact is that he had done his chores for the day and had settled into his regular routine of having a few beers. He was afraid that he would go out to install the wiper blades, and they'd be different somehow and he'd struggle with them and that the neighbors would see and know that he was drunk.

My mom was telling me this, and she said to me, "haven't you ever noticed that about your dad? On the weekends he gets his chores done and then he gets drunk and falls asleep in front of the TV."

My dad has never had trouble holding down a job in his life--in fact for years he worked 2 full-time jobs. He has always been a loving person to his wife and kids and I could never say that his relationships with us were anything but functional, loving, supportive relationships.

But on the weekends, he lived to get loaded.

Does he contribute? Sure. Could he contribute more? Probably, but how much is "enough"?