A Man with Problems
by David Barth
written November 1991
This is a true story about an co-worker whose life was filled with personal problems. Reflecting on this story makes my problems seem small by comparison.
Perhaps you will feel the same.
To protect his identity, we'll call this man Randy G. This story begins when he was a teenager, having recently gotten a driver's license. He was driving home
one Saturday afternoon, and as he drove up to his house, he was pulled over by a policeman. He showed the cop his driver's license and registration. Apparently,
the officer had noticed that his tail light was out. The cop simply told him of the infraction and reached out to hand him back his registration when he jerked his
hand back and exclaimed that the registration didn't match the license plates on the car. Randy said to me that his father was always cutting corners, and must
have "borrowed" the plates from a different vehicle that he owned to put on Randy's. We don't know the outcome of that incident, but that gives you the outline of
Randy's lifestyle. He was always cutting corners.
Randy was a handsome, outgoing guy with a big smile. He tried to make friends with everyone, and he was well-liked by most people who knew him.
The next segment of the saga involved Randy living with his wife and two children on Long Island, near his parent's home. When he and his wife went out, they hired
a young girl who lived in the neighborhood to babysit their two children. After they returned home, Randy would drive the sitter to her home. Suddenly, after a dozen
years of marriage, his wife divorced him, getting custody of the children and taking possession of their home.
Shortly after the divorce, Randy moved to Colorado with their baby sitter, seventeen years his junior. Randy was about 35 and she, 18. Although he never admitted it,
we, his coworkers, suspected that the divorce was related to Randy's involvement with the baby sitter.
Randy and the baby sitter jointly purchased a home on Black Widow Drive in Conifer, Colorado. She did not want to marry him yet, but she agreed to live with him.
She got a job in a day care center in Evergreen, Colorado.
They each purchased used cars. Randy drove his girlfriend's car from time to time. It had an oil light that would go on when the oil level got low. His car didn't have
such a light. He got used to putting oil into the car with the light, but forgot to check the oil in his car. As a result, he burned up his engine when it got too low on oil.
He had that car towed to his house where he parked it. He never had it fixed and never drove it again.
Randy had gotten a vasectomy after his second child was born, but this young girl desired to have a family, so Randy decided that he could provide her with a family
by taking custody of his children, a boy, 15, and a girl, 7. Randy took his ex wife to court and somehow proved that he was more suited as a parent than she. As
with most legal battles, the cost was high, and it put Randy $25,000 in debt, but he got the kids. Unfortunately, the action took several years, and by the time he
had won, his son was of age and left home to get a job and live on his own.
The daughter was about 10 years old when she moved in with Randy and his girlfriend and began attending a public school at Evergreen High School. Things went
fairly smoothly except for an occasional bump in Randy's life. One day he was drunk, riding his motorcycle, when he ran a light and crashed into a car, doing $4,000
damage to it. Miraculously, Randy was unhurt, as his story goes. Since Randy had no insurance, the court revoked his driver's license until he paid off the $4,000
due for the damage to the other car. Since he was in such poor financial shape, he was not able to pay the money, so he never got his license back.
When I met him, he got to work in Aurora by having his girlfriend drive him in her car to the bus stop in Conifer, ride the bus for an hour to work, then reverse the
process to get back home.
Within a few months, the girlfriend decided she wanted out of the relationship, and drove her car back to her parent's home on Long Island, New York. This was
devastating to Randy's daughter because their home was more than a mile from the home of her best friend, and there were no children her age in their immediate
neighborhood. Because Randy had to leave home so early to walk to the bus stop and ride to and from work, the daughter became a latch key kid, spending many
lonely hours at home. She was able to arrange to stay some evenings at her girlfriend's home, but that was only a temporary solution.
Randy's daughter began to display signs of acute depression. The situation was so bad that the school, in despair, recommended she be admitted to an asylum for
children for at least a few months to try to work out her problems. Fortunately, she was admitted to an institution near where Randy worked, so he could visit her at
lunch time.
Randy explained the situation to his boss, who was sympathetic at first, but grew annoyed when Randy began to abuse the agreement by leaving work at 2PM and
not returning until the next morning.
Because the bus routes were not good for his visitations to his daughter's hospital, Randy needed a car. He borrowed a car from a friend and drove it to work.
Unfortunately, the plates had expired, and the base police caught the infraction and cited Randy for not having up to date plates. Amazingly, they didn't cite him
for driving without a license. Again, Randy's ability to sweet talk people came through. Still, Randy had to appear to answer the expired license plate charge in
Federal Court (since he was caught on a military base). At the arraignment, Randy was decked out in his best suit and his best attitude. He impressed the judge
who let him off without even a fine!
Following this incident, Randy purchased a used Renault from a coworker for $500, on credit. On the way up to his house in Conifer, the car blew the head gasket.
Randy took the car to an auto repair in Evergreen. The work cost him $400.
Within the next couple of days, the car blew the head gasket again. Randy took the car to a different shop, but the repair cost was, again, around $400, so Randy
let them have the car. The coworker decided not to press Randy for the $500, since Randy was already so deeply in debt.
Next, Randy purchased an old, light-green, beat up pickup truck for $60. It barely ran, but it got him around. Within a few days of the purchase, the guard at the
gate of the government facility where Randy worked noticed the junker truck and stopped Randy to ask to see his license and proof of vehicle insurance. Randy
said he had left his license at home. The guard said no problem, his computer terminal could provide the necessary information. Randy immediately confessed
that he didn't have a license, and put on his most engaging personality for the guard. For the rest of us, we'd have been thrown in jail. For Randy, it was like he
cast a spell on the guard who said, well, Randy couldn't park on the military base, but if he parked in the lot just across the perimeter, it would be OK. So, after
that, Randy parked a few yards farther from work, and suffered no consequences for driving without a license. The base police decided that as long as he stayed
off their turf, they weren't concerned.
Randy desperately wanted to get back with his young girlfriend. I advised him to go after a woman more his age. He told me that for some reason, he preferred
women much younger than himself, and that he had a fixation on this girl that he couldn't shake off. He did date a girl near his own age, but he just couldn't get
excited about her. Unfortunately, she fell for Randy and took him home to meet her parents. Again, Randy's personality came through for him, knocking her off
her feet, even though he didn't even want to get serious with her. Unlike most of us men, Randy had the uncanny ability to easily wrap women around his finger.
They would do anything for him.
Meanwhile, on Long Island, Randy's girlfriend had gotten a job as a waitress and began taking classes at the local college. These two things worried Randy because
he knew she would be meeting many young men, and he didn't want to lose her. Not only did he need her, but he knew his daughter needed her
companionship, too.
The girlfriend still had feelings for him, and he ran up big phone bills talking to her long distance. He felt that the only way to coax her back to Denver was to go visit
her during the 1990 Christmas vacation.
Since Randy had a pilot's license, he decided to fly a small plane from Denver to New York for Christmas, thinking this would really impress his girlfriend and help her
decide to return to live with him in Colorado.
Randy joined a local flying club and in late December took off for New York after filing a flight plan from Denver to Long Island. He took with him some teddy bears to
give his girlfriend, hoping they would help his cause.
Shortly after takeoff, Randy found that the plane's cabin heater didn't work. Determined to get to New York for Christmas, he continued on, but soon became so cold
that he could hardly move his lips to talk over the radio. He landed at Akron, Colorado, about 100 miles northeast of Denver to get the heater fixed. Since it was late
afternoon, the mechanic told him it wouldn't be ready until the next morning. Randy stayed at a motel in Akron that night.
The repair took longer than anticipated, but before nightfall on the following day, he was off again. Since Randy's flying experience was somewhat limited, he got
confused when night fell, thinking that his instruments were reading incorrectly. He landed at a small airport at Imperial, Nebraska, in the western part of the state.
The airport was unattended, but the line shack was open and heated. Since he was on a tight budget, he carried cans of food to sustain himself during the flight.
He retrieved a can of beans from the plane, opened it, and heated it on the gas heater in the shack. After eating and taking a nap, he decided that he could navigate
without the use of the instruments. Unfortunately, in the below zero temperatures, the plane wouldn't start.
Randy returned to the shack for the night. The next morning, he gathered from the plane what items he could carry and abandoned it. He walked to a nearby farm
house and asked the farmer if he could get a ride into town, about a mile away. The farm family invited him in, and soon he had them under his spell. He gave the
two smaller teddy bears to the farmer's kids for Christmas, and the farmer and his wife invited him to stay for dinner. During dinner Randy showed his pleasing
personality. After dinner the farmer and his wife asked him to stay the night. The next morning, the farmer drove him 90 miles to Ogalalla, Nebraska where there
was a large airport with commuter service.
Randy got a flight to Lincoln, Nebraska. He had a guaranteed check card, but found that the teller machine in the airport wouldn't take his brand of card, and the
banks were closed since it was Sunday. Someone told him that his card would work at the teller machine in the Omaha airport, 30 miles north. Randy, never being
shy, shouted in the airport that he needed a ride to Omaha. Several other men came up to him saying that they, too, needed to get to Omaha. A lady offered them
a ride if they would chip in for gas.
In the Omaha airport, sure enough, Randy's card worked, but his card limit was such that he could only retrieve two hundred dollars per day, giving him a total of
around $350 including the money he had on him. Having once worked as a computer programmer for United Airlines, Randy went to the United counter to see
about getting a ticket to New York with a return to Denver after the holidays. He was first quoted a price of over $700. He put on his best personal relations
manner and soon had the price down to $300. Randy's ability to convince people was astounding.
Upon his return to Denver's Stapleton Airport, Randy didn't have transportation since his old truck was parked at Jeffco Airport where he had rented the plane. He
called the girl he had dated, (the one who was about his age, had fallen for him, had taken him to meet her parents, and then been dumped by him), and she drove
to the airport, picked him up, and drove him to his truck. There, he found that he had left the truck keys in the plane.
He assumed that by now, a week after he had abandoned it in Imperial, Nebraska, that someone would have retrieved it. No one had. So, he had the girl take him
to his home in Conifer. There, he realized that he had also left his house keys in the plane. He broke a window in his home to get in and called a locksmith to
make him a key for the truck. That key cost him $60, the same amount he had paid for the truck.
Meanwhile, Randy had forgotten to close his flight plan from Denver to New York, and search and rescue operations were underway to try to find him or the plane.
We don't know what penalty he paid for that blunder, but, knowing Randy, he probably talked his way out of it.
Shortly after this episode, Randy changed jobs. A mutual friend told me that he disappeared from that job a few months later, and we haven't heard
from him since.