“Just drunk,” and doesn’t remember his child’s birth.
Story from “This is True” by Randy Cassingham, with his “tagline:”
“FATHER OF THE YEAR: A man was arrested in a hospital in Ogden, Utah, after allegedly groping a nurse. Adam Jay Manning, 30, wasn’t a patient at the McKay-Dee Hospital: he had brought his girlfriend there to give birth to his child. Manning looked ‘up and down’ at the nurse and told her ‘how attractive she was, how cute she was,’ said police spokesman Lt. Loring Draper. The nurse ignored him, but he tried to massage her shoulders and then grabbed her breast, Draper said. She pulled away, but Manning kept after her and allegedly grabbed her again. ‘After the second time, the nurse asked what he was doing,’ Draper said. His girlfriend ‘responded he was just drunk.’ That’s when the nurse called police. Manning has been charged with forcible sexual abuse, a felony which calls for 1-15 years in prison. ‘He says he doesn’t remember any of it,” said his public defender. “He still hasn’t seen his child.’ (Ogden Standard-Examiner, Salt Lake Tribune) …It might be better for the kid if he never does.”
Randy’s quip is clever, but not entirely accurate—but only because he had to take poetic license to get the point across in something as short as a quip. Many people, along with the justice system, discourage the “break-up” of families even when addiction rages all around them, thinking that children are better off; after all, an addicted parent is better than a broken-up family or no biological parent at all. Not true. Addicted parents care more about the drug than the children, they may pose a serious danger to the life of the child (drinking and driving, beatings, etc. are commonplace in the lives of children of alcoholics) and such children, even when they do not inherit addiction, can learn some very bad lessons.
(Story and tagline from “This is True,” copyright 2009 by Randy Cassingham, used with permission.)