The Kids Grow Up, Trish Hanan [books you need to read .txt] 📗

isn’t the answer, musical ability isn’t for everyone, maybe you have other talents, Ryan, maybe you should try the drums, God knows you like to bang around here enough,” he said and Ryan’s eyes lit up.
“Yeah, that would be cool, or the guitar, I love the guitar, Dad,” he gushed. Harry stood up.
“Let’s go to the music store and see what else they have because if I have to listen to you playing that trumpet one more second, I’m going to have to kill myself,” he declared and everyone laughed. And of course all the kids wanted to go so they all loaded up in the SUV and headed for the music store.
“How many stores do you and dad own, Dad?” Jackson asked on the way. Harry grinned.
“Fifty-four,” he said and they all gasped.
“Wow, I bet you own more than anyone else in town,” Adam said. Harry nodded.
“Yep, and when you grow up, you can have any of the stores you want,” he told them and they all nodded.
“I want the jewelry store,” Emma announced and Jake laughed.
“I knew she would pick that one, babe,” he said and everyone laughed.
“I want Toys R Us,” Danny shouted and they all laughed.
“I want the Coke factory,” Sean announced and Ryan grinned.
“Me too, I love Coke,” he declared. Harry nodded.
“That’s good, that’s a big one and it’ll take two of you to run it,” he told them and they beamed. Cassie shrugged.
“I don’t know what I want, I’ll figure it out later,” she said and Harry nodded.
“That’s okay, darling, you don’t have to pick right now,” he said and she grinned.
They got to the music store and everyone rushed inside and looked around. All the boys wanted guitars, so Harry let them pick one out and he got videos on how to play the instruments for them and music books for when they learned. Both girls picked out tambourines so they could be backup singers and Harry let them get microphones and amps so they could start their own band if they wanted to. Sean got drums and Danny got a keyboard that was a piano too.
When they got home he sent out an email to all the older kids offering them guitars and keyboards and microphones in case they were interesting in starting bands and he was surprised that no one seemed interested so he just shrugged and put the email away. He couldn’t force them to be creative. All of his kid’s friends wanted them though and he took them all to the store and they picked out guitars, keyboards, drums and of course amps and microphones.
What Harry didn’t know was that his mother Kate was the music teacher at school and everyone hated music because they hated her so no one wanted anything to do with music because they thought that if they learned how to play an instrument it would land them in her class longer or with her and they hated her so much. If he had known that he might have worded the email and informed them that she wouldn’t have anything to do with their bands.
On the second and fifth Saturday Harry and Dr. George had regular clinic hours in the morning for anyone who wanted to come in to talk with them and get healed or get some ailment looked at. When Charles’s fourteen year-old daughter Hilary and her best friend fourteen year-old Ashley Roberts walked in the clinic he was surprised to see them and asked what he could do to help. He was surprised when they asked if they could talk to Harry in private.
“Sure, you can talk to Harry,” he said and Harry took them into a private room.
“What can I do for you, ladies, today?” Harry asked gently because he had a suspicion he knew what they wanted. They looked at each other and Ashley decided to be the brave one.
“Harry, if we ask for something private, you can’t tell my father about it, right?” she asked and fiddled with her purse strap. He nodded.
“That’s correct, anything I help you with is between us, I can’t even tell Jake about it and I promise you I won’t tell anyone,” he said solemnly. They both sighed with relief.
“We want a birth control shot, we heard they’re a hundred percent accurate,” Hilary said and Harry nodded.
“You do understand that if you’re going to be sexually active, you also have to have a yearly pap and an exam,” he informed them and they shrugged.
“Our mom said we have to do that anyway since we started our periods,” Ashley told him and he nodded.
“Sure, I can give you the shots, you wait right here and I’ll be back,” he said. Ashley got a panicked look on her face.
“You won’t let Dr. George see them will you?” she asked. Harry shook his head.
“No, I won’t, I promise,” he said and they both sighed. He walked to the back and got two shots and skipped writing on the inventory sheet what he had taken. Then he went back to the room and gave them the shots. They hugged him and left. He walked back to the main office and went back to his computer work he was doing. George glanced at him but he didn’t offer up any comments and the older man sighed.
“Birth control shots, was it?” he asked and Harry just kept working. Dr. George sighed.
“Well, its better to give a fourteen year-old girl a birth control shot than it is to perform an abortion on a fourteen year-old girl,” he stated and Harry agreed.
Harry took a box of shots home with him and sure enough the following week he got a lot of visitors, all female and fourteen and all wanting birth control shots, even a couple of thirteen year-olds wanted the shots and he gave them to them also. It was better than a couple of thirteen year-old pregnant girls.
The following year nineteen fifteen year-old marched down to Harry and Jake’s Jeep dealership and picked out the car or Jeep they wanted. He gave them to the kids for free which pleased all of their parents tremendously. He had all of the extra cars from the beach houses and craft houses plus two hundred and fifty Jeeps for them to choose from and they all took their time and picked the one they wanted to most. Carl and Frank had taught them all in Driver’s Ed at the school and they had all passed the test so everyone knew they were ready to drive. Harry had a surprise for them, he had sneaked away to the woods beyond town and built them a twenty mile round circle road with two roads crossing it for them to drive around and in the middle of it he was going to give them a house to hang out in. It would be their private hang out and none of the parents needed to know about it if the kids didn’t want them to know.
“Okay, everyone follow me and I’ve got a little surprise for you,” Harry announced over channel thirteen when all the kids were in their cars. They all followed him out of town and to the new road. When they reached the house site he parked and got out. All the kids got out and looked at him.
“What’s this place, Harry?” Ben Emery asked. Harry smiled.
“This is the new teenage hangout, if you want one, it’s a five bedroom house and you can put anything you want in it from my stores, music, games, videos, whatever. And this road here goes in a circle, twenty miles around and across so you can practice your driving, just don’t kill yourselves or your parents will kill me,” he told them and they all laughed.
“Hey, this is pretty cool, thanks, man,” Alistair Smith exclaimed. All the kids nodded and hugged him.
The older kids helped them put it up and they decorated it with stuff from Harry and Jake’s stores and if a couple of the rooms had beds Harry didn’t say a word; that was their business. The house had food and they called it the ‘Clubhouse’ and all the younger kids wanted to hang out there and they couldn’t because the only way to get there was to drive and none of the older kids with cars would take them.
“Do you know the kids have some kind of clubhouse in the woods they go to hang out?” Linda asked Myra at coffee one day. Myra nodded.
“Hilary goes there all the time with Donna, now that she has a car, I barely see her,” she said and June nodded.
“The same with Ashley, as soon as she comes home from school, she hops in that car and it’s off to the clubhouse until bedtime, she even cooks there,” she told them.
“How did they get a house in the woods?” Shelley asked. Linda snorted.
“Harry gave it to them, who else, he gives them cars, he gives them houses, and they can walk into any of his stores and take what they want. We don’t have any power over them. When Max threatens Maribeth with taking away her allowance, she just laughs at him and says who cares, she doesn’t need any money,” she said. Shelley nodded.
“Georgie never asks me for any money, everything he brings into the house comes from one of Harry and Jake’s stores and when I ask him how much it costs, he says they gave it to him,” she told them.
“Face it, ladies, as long as they have Harry to give them everything they want, we have no control over them,” Linda stated and they all frowned.
“I know he saved us and he’s made life easier on the planet for us with the metal containers and toothpaste and shampoo and everything but these are our kids and he has no business interfering with the way we raise them,” June said. Meri sighed.
“What are we going to do next year if the kids decide that sixteen is the perfect age to move out? Steve and Kathleen moved out at sixteen; what if my Maribeth decides that sixteen is the right age to move out,” she whined and they all looked shocked.
“Well, they can’t, we won’t allow that, we have to have a town meeting and tell Harry that he simply cannot give the kids any houses until they are eighteen years old,” Linda snapped. Shelley laughed.
“He won’t listen to us, he didn’t listen to us before, what makes you think he’s going to listen to us now,” she said.
At the next town meeting they brought it up, Jake was at the meeting and everyone glared at him. He just shrugged.
“Jake, you’re going to have to talk with Harry and tell him not to give the children any houses until they’re eighteen,” Jenna told him. He stood up.
“You’re all going to have to talk with Harry, I don’t have anything to do with the houses, they belong to him,” he said firmly. Kate stood up.
“That’s a crap answer and you know it, Jake, don’t you have any say in this matter?” she asked. He nodded.
“Of course I do, and I think if your children want to move out of the house when they’re sixteen then they should be able to move out when they’re sixteen You’re not wardens in a prison,