I flew my B-I-L out to spend a week with my wife so that they would get a chance to spend some time together before he leaves for Iraq. I did the same three years ago prior to his deployment to Afghanistan.

An interesting conversation came up regarding my S-I-L and some comments she repeatedly has made about my wife and I.

A little background: S-I-L is functionally illiterate. She can read and write on ~ 5th grade level and she is a 22yo college student. When she was in High School The People's Communist Republic of Oregon decided that the way to save money on public schools was to lower graduation requirements. So S-I-L started her Junior year and was notified within a few weeks that if she took an extra single credit class she could graduate at the end of her Junior year if her parents would sign to allow her to graduate early. Now, my S-I-L is not the kid with the best judgement on the planet (she is her parents daughter after all) so she decided this would be a good idea. Against my wife's protests my I-Ls signed to allow S-I-L to get out a year early. If there is a kid that needed that year+ of maturity gained between 16.5 and 18 it is my S-I-L.

Now S-I-L had been sexually active since she was ~13 and was in a hot and heavy relationship with her BF of the time. My wife was petrified that S-I-L would get pregnant. This is a very emotional issue for my wife since she had SS when she was 16.

In order to minimize the potential down side associated with S-I-L (then 16)graduating early and doing nothing but screwing herself to a state of bovine pregnant contentedness I came up the with the idea that if S-I-L would move to Texas with us, keep the dishes clean, the yard watered and mowed, and watch our son (then 11) after school that we would provide a car for her to drive and pay for college for her. She would just be a member of our household and enjoy the benefits of being a member of our family and get a free college education out of the deal.

She grudgingly took us up on the offer and ended up staying with us for a year and completing her first year of college. At the end of her Freshman year, she decided that she needed to be with her BF. She had spent nearly every night on the computer having cyber sex with the guy for a year so it was not like they had not been in contact and he had flown out to visit a couple of times. Some of the messages she left up on the computer turned even my stomach and I went to college in that period at the tail end of the sexual revolution and before the onset of the Aids epidemic when just about anything sexual you wanted to do was fair game. So in order for her messages to turn my stomach they were BAD!

So she left to move back "home". She surprised me by actually transferring to a college near her home town and getting back in school. I will grudgingly give her credit for at least that.

According to B-I-L she has been spouting quite frequently at family gatherings that she left because my wife and I were controlling her too much and that we forced her to study Business when she really wanted to be a teacher among other horrible things that we forced her to do like 1. Go to class. 2. Do her homework. 3. Study. 4. Repeatedly re-write her illegible and unintelligible attempts at college level school papers.

Now, we did not force her to study business. The University that she went to was my wife's Alma Matter and was the only University she could get in to and only because my wife pulled some strings to get her in. The University offered only business related degrees at the Campus near where we lived. We knew she wanted to be a teacher and repeatedly helped her lay out the plan for finishing her BS in Management then entering the Texas Emergency Teacher Certification Program (Texas like most states is short on teachers) then taking three years of summers to get her permanent teaching credentials.

Anyway, she finished her Freshman year with decent grades due to my wife maintaining a permanent position behind S-I-L with her foot firmly implanted up the young woman's ass. At the end of the year she ran home and in short order conceived and delivered an out of wedlock spawn with her moron BF, transferred to a local college where she has proceeded to live on school loans for the past four years (my dead reckoning is that she is sitting on at least $30,000.00 in loans so far), has failed at least one class a year, has not made up any of her failed classes, and is now mad because the academic advisers lied to her about when she would graduate.

We have repeatedly told her she needed to have a degree audit done by her advisers. But, nooooo, she and my M-I-L reviewed the course catalog and decided that she would graduate by Winter 2009. Rather than initiate the official degree audit of her transcripts she had an informal conversation with her advisor who told her that if S-I-Ls analysis was correct the Dec 2009 for graduation sounded reasonable. The advisor told her that to get her official graduation standing she needed to have a formal degree audit done. (sounds familiar right?) Well, because the audit would cost $50.00 she decided it was not worth it and went on her merry way taking classes (many that she did not need)for a couple of more years.

Well, she finally had the formal degree audit done and guess what !!!!!!!!!!!! she has at least 4 more years before she can finish her Bachelors degree because, she has not made up any classes she failed (this is not Oregon high schools any more little girl where they give you sympathy credits so you can graduate)and many of the classes she has taken she did not need. This is the real world big leagues where you actually have to perform and do the work or you go home with a load of school debt and nothing to show for it.

Since her degree audit her bad mouthing of my wife and I has increased because if we had not "forced" her to move to Texas and forced her to study business she would have had enough hours to graduate in Dec 2009. Keep in mind that she could not get in to the college she now "attends" right out of high school because they would not even talk to her due to her barely passing grades. It was the grades we kicked her ass for her to get that got her accepted as a transfer student.

So, apparently at family gatherings she is throwing us under the bus for ruining her life and her college experience while many of my wife's family stand there commiserating with her on how we screwed up her life. The ingnorant little slut would not have even gone to college if not for us. Grrrrr!

There is no helping some people and there are some people that can't get a clue when you write it (correctly) on a 2X4 and beat them over the head with it until it sinks in.

Sorry for the long rant but I had to vent.

Best regards,