Chapter 1 - Tailspin

The Real Jeannine Price

Tailspin

“Go fuck yourself, John! I hope you fucking die! You caused all this shit!,” Cameron screamed to me after that family meeting in July, 2022.

She was 14.

She then exaggeratedly stomped out of the room making sure Jeannine and I both could hear her displeasure. With the loud slam of a door that unevened picture frames on walls, Cameron made it forcibly evident she was in her room and not to be bothered.

I gazed across the pub table I built the previous fall where Jeannine and I had come to be seated after the entitled princess stormed out. The glossy tabletop became decorated with several spattered teardrops that had fallen from the bottom of Jeannine’s chin. I slowly gazed upward, staring into her brilliant blue, tear-glazed-over eyes.

“She will undo us one day,” I calmly said to Jeannine.

Jeannine replied not so calmly:“I don’t care what she thinks! I’m not in this relationship for her! She will have to understand that shit one day!”

I suppose I should have seen everything that was to come my way beginning February 14, 2024. Maybe I did see it coming. I suppose I chose not to see what was coming. I suppose I chose to ignore the inevitable. I chose to ignore because I loved Jeannine. Just because she birthed an entitled, spoiled brat didn’t change that.

In July, 2022, Cameron had just finished her freshman year of high school. She had changed in the years I knew her. All children do - especially teenage girls. I had raised my own two natural daughters and can testify to the difficulties of raising daughters - especially from a father’s perspective.

She wasn’t my natural daughter, although I never treated Cameron any differently than my own. She was the first and only child born to Jeannine. Cameron’s father had never been a part of her life, except for the occasional summer month she spent with him in his native Maine. That is not at all to disparage the man. I don’t know him and can offer that he got (and still gets) a bad rap by Jeannine, her family and her friends. I can also offer that Cameron’s not knowing her father better is a direct result of Jeannine’s and her parents’ doing.

I first met Cameron when she was 10. In the beginning I didn’t notice the significance of it all, but in the years that passed I certainly did. I, too, met my stepfather when I was 10. My natural father passed away when I was five. During those five years between the ages of five and 10, I lived with my maternal grandparents. My mother was 16 when she had me, became a widow at 21 and still had a lot of life to rethink. At 10, I wanted no other man near my mother - and I was ready to fight any man that dared encroach upon my responsibilities to her and my younger brother.

I told lies about my stepfather. I rebelled against him. I rebuked him. I cursed him. Yet, he only loved me in return. No matter what I did wrongly to him - he never expected an apology. To him, it was already forgiven. My stepfather became the man I most admired in my life, and I would call him “Dad” for the rest of his life.

He passed away in the mid-morning hours of my 46th birthday. Mine was the last face he saw when he left this world. My words of gratitude for all he did for me were the last ones he heard.

When I delivered his eulogy four days later, I told the congregation made up in part of hundreds of firemen with whom my dad worked for over four decades, “I love Ms. Webster. She is the only one of many who properly defines, ‘father.’ A father is a man of any begotten child, meaning a father does not have to be natural or biological.”

As I was to my dad, Cameron was to me. Although we were never married, once Jeannine and I knew we’d be together forever and I was expected to be her father figure, I made an oath to myself to do my part to help Jeannine raise her the same way my dad raised me: hard but fair. That’s to say, the same way I raised my own, natural girls. I loved Cameron as one of my own - not just because she was an extension of Jeannine.

I could not help but notice the significant emotional and behavioral changes in Cameron beginning that summer of 2022. I sensed her changes were far more significant than most other teenage girls. She became outwardly hostile toward me; regularly disrespectful to her mother; and down right obnoxious. She skipped school (with Jeannine’s consent and knowledge, by the way). She couldn’t keep steady friends. She ignored any idea of boundary. And she bounced around from travel volleyball team to travel volleyball team because no coach wanted her cancer on their sideline and because Jeannine couldn’t accept the fact that Cameron couldn’t make the teams she wanted to play on for nothing other than her piss-poor attitude.

I knew there were deeper-rooted problems at play, and I did what any parent might do: I investigated. I wanted to know why Cameron had so mightily changed.

There’s a pretty good place to start mining for answers’ to a child’s abrupt change in behavior: social media. And that’s exactly where I started. Now - I hope I’m not unlike other parents in that I’m not the most fluent social media user. Yeah, I’ve had a Facebook account that was used off-and-on for a few years, but I never took to the social media frenzy like everyone else back when it all began. I saw it as a bullshit way to advertise your life’s façade. There’s that word again - bullshit.

But. What I learned raising children is that children take to social media like a fly to shit. Kids these days have limited personal social skills which is such the paradox considering their flocking to ‘social’ media. There’s nothing personalized about social media. Kids can make a You Tube short per day and get 25,000 views, but they can’t hold a conversation at the dinner table (unless it’s on their phones, of course).

I only had, at that time in July, 2022, a Facebook account. Cameron was one of my Facebook friends. When I clicked on her Facebook page, there were links to her other social media profiles. I started with her Instagram and worked my way through her TikTok account. What I found was shocking.

At 14, on open-source social media, she was outwardly presenting herself as an object with absolutely no respect for herself as a blooming young woman. In her defense, she probably didn’t even realize the dangers of her posts nor the message she was sending. Well - she probably intended wholly to send the message she knew she was sending but probably didn’t realize the extent of the potential dangers.

I discovered on Camerons’ social media platforms her being photographed … let’s say scantily clothed. In one particular photograph, she was photographed from behind - not unintentionally - wearing a thong bikini. It was blatantly obvious she was making her ass the focal point of the pictures with the caption, “More bikini pics for your feed.”

So - I did what any dad would do. I went sideways. But I didn’t go directly to Cameron. Instead, I went to Jeannine.

That day in July of 2022 when I made these discoveries was a weekday. Jeannine was at work so I called her to tell her what I’d found. I could only describe my discoveries to her, so Jeannine asked me to send her screenshots of what I was talking about. I didn’t immediately send her the screenshots. Instead, I drove to her office and went through Camerons’ social media platforms together with her. I wanted to stress to her not only the obvious inappropriateness of the photographs but also the captions Cameron wrote with them.

After seeing her 14-year-old daughter on full display for the world to see, Jeannine slumped forward toward her desk, anchored her elbows on it and became to rest her forehead in the cradle of her hands. Jeannine wasn’t even aware of Cameron’s social media.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s have a family meeting about this tonight after work.”

I could feel a palatable stress pouring from Jeannine. It wasn’t stress over her daughter’s 14-year-old body advertised on the world wide web, but stress because of her fear of confronting her daughter. The Wrath of Cameron.

“Let me do the talking at first,” Jeannine said. “She won’t want to hear this from you. It will only make things worse.”

When she said it would get ‘worse,’ Jeannine was referring to the already-contentious relationship between me and Cameron. Earlier that year, I suggested to Jeannine she shouldn’t forge Cameron’s school registration so Cameron could arbitrarily choose to attend whichever public high school she wanted.

It’s no secret that Virginia Beach has 12 public high schools. Like most localities across the country, some public high schools are ‘better’ than others. ‘Better’ is subjective, of course, but Cameron believed Cox High School to be better than First Colonial High School. Because Cameron, by her address, was zoned to attend First Colonial, Jeannine forged Cameron’s enrollment forms to reflect an address in the Cox zone.

While not an end-of-the-world issue, I brought it up to Jeannine to evidence one of the many things that were done for Cameron that enabled Cameron to feel entitled to do and say the things she did. Yes - Cameron was entitled. She was enabled to be entitled. When Cameron found out I questioned why she was so entitled as to attend the public high school of her choice, Cameron became unhinged in Cameron’s special, wrathful way.

After we poured over Cameron’s social media and before I left her office, I told Jeannine I loved her and that everything was going to be okay. I was wrong. The family meeting, as feared by Jeannine, would most certainly make things worse. It would begin a year and a half downward tailspin that would leave us all suffering the lifelong devastation of its impact.

Jeannine got home from work at 4:20 p.m. every day. That July afternoon was no different. She walked in where I was already seated at the bar, which was the focal point of the house. We spent most of our time in the bar. Jeannine and I built the bar sometime in 2020. It was reminiscent of an old Irish pub - complete with real pallet boarding walls and, of course, a heavy, custom-built bar.

I already had the day’s first beer in front of me on the bar as Jeannine walked in. She walked directly toward me, spun my barstool so I was facing her instead of the bar, leaned forward bracing herself with her hands on my knees and stared deeply into my eyes. She exhaled slowly and fully, appearing to mentally prepare herself for the family meeting and the undoubted drama that was about to unfold.

Feeling like a coach to his star player before the biggest game of the year, I told her, “Hey. We got this,” although, I knew this was going to be Hell.

In the weeks leading up to the July, 2022 family meeting, Cameron was Hell. I had made it known that her behavior, in general, was unacceptable. More often than Cameron wanted, Jeannine agreed with me. Of course Cameron hated that her mother would, in any way, listen to my opinions and thoughts. You see - Jeannine never corrected Cameron even when correction was blatantly and obviously needed. Jeannine was easily persuaded and manipulated by Cameron and she could by-and-large do whatever she wanted - whenever and however she wanted to do it. There was no curfew. There was no boundary. There was no accountability. Those things were what I presented and the antithesis of what Cameron wanted.

Before Cameron was called into the family meeting in the bar, Jeannine asked me to help set the scene.

“Hey - can you project those social media pictures onto the bar TV?”

“I think so.”

I have to give Jeannine all the credit for that move. Projecting all the images Cameron had published to the world onto a 42” TV was dramatic and demonstrative of the inappropriateness of it all. It would’ve been blatantly obvious to even a 14-year-old child. Jeannine then walked behind the bar and made herself her day’s first Captain Morgan and Diet Pepsi.

With Cameron’s most inappropriate social media photo and caption on full 42” display at 1080p high definition, Jeannine yelled for Cameron to come to the bar. Jeannine and I were seated in the front of the main bar and Cameron seated herself on the dogleg side. Cameron immediately saw the pink elephant in the room and just stared at the screen.

Although I was clear Jeannine had wanted to do most of the talking, sometime into Jeannine’s monologue about the social media smut, Jeannine looked to me to explain, from a father’s perspective, why the social media photos were so inappropriate. Cameron’s face became swollen red - fueled with anger.

“This is fucking bullshit. Why are these pictures on the TV?!”

Kids. At 14 they think that when parents find out their misbehavior online, it’s because their parents were just snooping. Gotta love it. But this kid? This kid wasn’t questioning why her misbehavior was discovered, but why her misbehavior was even being questioned. She had been raised to do, act and say whatever she wanted - with impunity.

“Cameron,” I said, “this is out there for the entire world to see. You’ve published it on the World Wide Web and you KNOW that.”

“Huh?” Cameron questioned with some attempt to play unwitting and dumb.

“You see that little icon on your Twitter feed for ‘followers?’ That, Cameron, is the encrypted section of your account. If you’ve projected an R-rated version of yourself on your public Twitter feed, what would there be in your protected section of Twitter?”

Cameron became characteristically unhinged - the mannerism she would revert to that she knew Jeannine hated. Jeannine loathed butting heads with her. Arguing with Cameron was not winnable for Jeannine.

“Give me your phone!” Jeannine screamed as she reached across the bar to snatch Cameron’s phone.

Jeannine was a bit too slow. Cameron grabbed it up and ran into my and Jeannine’s bedroom adjacent to the bar. Jeannine gave chase and physically pried Cameron’s phone away. I didn’t see the physical tussle but could visualize it from sound. I simply unseated myself from my barstool and retired to a chair at the pub table just behind me.

Moments after I sat at the pub table, Jeannine emerged from the bedroom, approached and seated herself across from me. Tears streamed down her face so forcefully that they dripped from her chin with synchronized marked time.

Cameron soon emerged again in the bar to see Jeannine and me seated and talking at the pub table. That’s at about the time she told me to go fuck myself - to fucking die - and that I caused all this. Yep. The Wrath of Cameron.

To Chapter 2