Almost Lost (11 page)

“It's wonderful to have friends like that, isn't it?”

“It's more wonderful than almost anything else except family.”

“But one has to
be
a friend to have a friend, don't they?”

“I'd never thought about that before, but it's true, isn't it? You can't expect anyone to really like and respect you unless you first like and respect them.”

“And unless you really
like and respect yourself!
Right?”

“Ummm, yeah…probably.”

“Could that be the main reason why some people have many friends and some people have few or none?”

“Could be. Could be! I'll need to think on that some.”

“We could spend a whole session on more security, belonging, comfort-level concepts like that, but hadn't we better get back to school things?”

“Well, I hadn't slept a full night since I got home I was so, in a part of me, worried about the gang thing. My stitches had all been removed, but I still had red
shriveled-looking scars where the wounds were trying to heal. Actually I'd had some infection that Grandma Maizy had cleared up, but I still don't feel quite up to snuff, and I still have to baby my right leg some. I wondered if the scars would all break open if I got pounded pretty good, which I was almost sure I would. It was kind of a nightmarish time.”

“You poor kid. I can't imagine a more nightmarish time. You must have been really scared and uncertain.”

“Yeah, I was, till Marv told me they had a new principal at our school and that he had insisted all the troublemakers be sent to the alternative school that our town had been talking about since as long ago as I can remember. That really took the bricks out of my belly.”

“It takes a few out of mine, too.”

“I wish I could talk to everyone like I talk to you. I open my mouth and just let my tongue wag and my brains fall out.”

“Most of that is because you trust me. You know I wouldn't betray your confidence. Wouldn't life be wonderful if we could feel safe and secure with everyone? If we could say whatever we thought without having someone be critical or infer that they knew better, or reasoned more deeply, or were better read, or that we had intentionally hurt their feelings, etc? I'm grateful and flattered that you can ‘let your brains fall out' with me. I hope you'll never forget that, as I've told you before, I'm always as near as your phone.”

“You don't know how much security that's given me after all my super insecure hard times.”

“I'm glad.”

“Let me tell you about Dr. Davidson, the new principal. He's spent a lot of time with me. He's
African American and he's about the straightest arrow I've ever met. He's a kind of hard as the Rock of Gibraltar type guy, but gentle as a kitten at the same time. Does that make sense?”

“The kindest kind of sense.”

“And you know what's funny?”

“No, what?”

“He used to be a gang member, too, but he was different than me. He grew up on the tough side of Chicago, and he had to scrounge to exist. His mom was a maid who had to take the bus across town every day and work from early morning till late at night. His dad? He had no idea who he was, and his grandma mostly raised him. Dr. D. said he'd never told anyone else at school the details of his background, but he seems to feel about me like I feel about him. In fact, a couple of times I've found myself imagining that he was taking me under his wing…and even…that he was my dad. Is that totally insane or what? I wasn't going to tell you that because I hoped you thought that I was getting my gonzos together and doing pretty well.”

“I do! And I did! It's perfectly all right and normal for you to have a pretend father when you don't have a real father figure in your life. Actually, in one study, groups of young men who had lived in boys' homes, during part or all of their growing up years, were interviewed as adults. Each of them said that at one time or another during their stay they had envisioned Matthew Marcus, the compassionate supervisor of the program, as their father.”

“Whew. It's a relief to know that at least in one area I'm normal.”

“You're more normal than you like to believe.
Actually what is normal? It's
not
a small, restrictive cage!”

“Is it normal to think you're not normal?”

“Very normal! Especially if you're young! And don't worry about it. If you're trying to be nourishing to yourself as well as to others, and you keep a
happy, pos 'tude, you can always
rest assured that you'll be
more
normal than most normal folks.”

“Okay, back to Dr. Davidson. In some ways he's not like me at all. He had nothing, and he clawed his way up to what he calls his ‘Plateau of Contentment.' Me, on the other hand, I had everything, and I willingly chose to take the dark, downhill route to complete discontent and self-destruction.

“I honestly almost can't believe I did those things now. But the black hate in my heart just kept exploding in greater and greater detonations until I was no longer
ME! IT
was
ME!
Why hadn't I been taught somewhere along the line that hate could grow like that?”

“Would you have believed your mom or anybody else if they had told you?”

“Probably not.”

“How about you and I go on a crusade to teach everyone how quickly negative thoughts and actions
can
contaminate, actually toxically poison?”

“I sure could have saved myself a lot of pain if I'd known way back then how insidiously”—a half smile crossed his face—“that was a spelling word I missed twice and thought I'd never use but it fits exactly here, anyway
I can't believe how quickly my self-esteem was replaced by self-hatred, which then took over every part of my body—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually
.” He shuddered, “Do you think it could happen to me again?”

“What do you think?”

“It's scary, and I don't want to believe it, but I think it could…IF I'D LET IT! WHICH I WON'T! Never, never, in my life again will I let negativity, or pessimism or depression or any of the other black destroying monsters of my past be in control of me! I'll recognize them and stamp them out like black widow spiders while they're still eggs, and while I'm still in control.”

“Dear, dear, Sammy, do you realize how deep and accurate that statement is?”

“You mean that I must learn to control depression and hostility or they will control me?”

“Absolutely true. I stand amazed by the simple, down-to-earth, awesome insight that teenagers often have.”

“That's refreshing. Most adults think we're just a crop of no-brainers.”

“Only some adults think that. The silent majority of us respect the greater part of your generation and what you have to offer our future as well as yours.”

“Thanks. I was telling you about Dr. Davidson, the coolest of all cool principals. He was brought up in a cement and asphalt jungle, in the crime-infested part of Chicago. Anyway, his grandma and mom would hardly let him out of their sight till he started school. By then he'd had a little four-year-old cousin killed in the cross fire from a gang shoot-out, and the little kid had just been playing on the steps in front of her house. He had two uncles in jail and others in gangs and drug dealing.

“And some of his aunts and their girl kids. He got tears in his eyes the only time he ever mentioned them to me. Very young girls to women who ‘had babies and babies and more babies.' Poor Dr. Davidson, he had been to five relatives' funerals by the
time he was in junior high school, and most of the deaths had been gang- or drug-related in one way or another.

“Dr. D.—I call him that when the two of us are alone, not when we're around anyone else; I guess it makes me feel closer to him and safer, in some crazy way. Anyway, he said one day when he was ill, he was sitting on their front stoop and he knew his grandma was watching him out the window. He got so mad he just wanted to get up and run down to the corner where a bunch of guys were hanging, laughing and dancing to a boom box and shoving each other playfully and sometimes sharing a joint. He got up and started to do it. He was tired of his mom and grandma making him study every night when no one else had to and tired of always being with one of them, never having a life of his own. He had nothing. The street guys had everything—fun, friendship, freedom!

“But when Dr. D. thought
freedom
, it was like some literal force pulled him back, sat him down on the stoop, and pried open his brain. Positive thoughts poured in, pushing away the negative ones. Did he really want to wind up on the street like his dead relatives, or the pushers or the runners or the gang-bangers or the alcoholics or the crack addicts? All the fears that possessed him and his mom and his grandma, when there was a shooting on the street outside his home, pulled in on him. Often the three of them huddled together in his grandmother's little room, which was on the inside of the building where stray bullets couldn't come through.

“Dr. D. said his teachers had to spend so much time just keeping, or at least trying to keep, order that they were more like policemen than teachers.
Each one of his classes was mainly a daily exercise in crowd control. He and the few other kids who were interested in learning were in the minority, and the street culture was as noticeable inside the building as outside. Actually, in many ways, the few good students were in more danger inside the school than outside. They were teased, tormented, and sometimes even tortured. Dr. D. pulled up his shirt and showed me lots of ‘jabber' scars he had received in the school halls and on the grounds, when the kids used to wear Afros.”

“What is jabber?”

“I asked that, too. It's sort of like a metal fork, but of course stronger and with longer and sharper points. If a kid was caught with one he, or she, would claim it was a hair pick, but usually kids who were jabbed didn't dare leak it to anyone. That would have brought down more torment. Dr. D. said good students attracted all kinds of bullying. He even had kids threaten to shoot or cut (stab) him when he got 100 percent on tests. In fact, at one point it got so bad, he purposely missed many questions. In one class while he was in high school his teacher understood and told him that when it came time for his college admission, she would write a long letter on his behalf and have the other teachers and the principal sign it. He said the worst thing is that things are worse today than they were then.”

“What a travesty of justice and honor and education. It makes me sad.”

“What would you have done if you had been there?”

“I would have tried!”

“He said lots of them tried. One teacher, Mr. Pliede, in high school became his hero. He encouraged Dr. D. and gave him extra credit assignments
that no one else ever saw. He drilled him and challenged him in other subjects and even bought him an exercise video so that he could exercise at home and wouldn't have to go out on the streets.”

“Wasn't Dr. Davidson fortunate to have had Mr. Pliede, and aren't you fortunate to have
him?
”

“Yeah, but sometimes it makes me feel even more guilty, me having everything and screwing up, and him having nothing and shooting straight.”

“Sammy, there is an old, old, old saying, ‘Don't cry over spilled milk.' Think about that for a few seconds. Does it make sense?”

He laughed. “I guess it means what's over is over and you can't pick up milk.”

“So?”

He was quiet for a while. When he spoke his face was serious and tense. “I just wonder what would have happened to weak-kneed me if I'd been brought up in Dr. D.'s place.”

“Don't! Just bring out your trusty old pos 'tude ladder and start climbing up, up, up and out of your dark restrictive hole into the pos 'tude of your bright unrestricted peace and personal fulfillment.”

“That sounds good
for me
but it makes me even sadder for all the hurting kids who seem stuck in their dead-end situations. I wish like everything there was something I could do for
them!
”

“There are many things you can do for them, dear Sammy.”

Sammy grunted wearily.

“There are many things we all could, and should, be doing. For instance there are remedial reading, writing, and arithmetic classes in many libraries around the country, including school libraries.”

“Really?”

“Really! And they are ever so important because according to the latest statistics between ten and thirteen percent of Americans are functionally illiterate. That means they read at, or below, a third grade level, or not at all.”

Sammy's eyes opened wide with shock, then he smiled. “Wow, imagine the excitement and adventure that would be brought into a person's life if they were taught how to make thoughts and concepts out of squiggly lines.”

“Imagine!”

“Maybe Dr. Davidson could connect me with a kid who is behind and I could tutor him before or after school. Maybe I could even become a ‘big brother' to a kid from a broken family.”

“Isn't it exciting to know that
you
can make a difference?”

“And
I will
do something! I don't understand how in the past I could have been given so much and have given so little in return!”

“It doesn't make sense to
dwell
on negatives either.
So
what positive thing are we going to do first?”

“I dunno.”

“Then I've been wasting my time, and your time and money.”

“That's not so! Mmmm…I guess…no! I think…no! I
know
each of us has to first help ourselves up to a good mental health plateau so we can then help others and hopefully, in time, our pos 'tudes will spread out like waves on a pond and the world will be engulfed by them.” Sammy shrugged and looked sad. “At least they'll be able to engulf a few people. Some people are so far gone I don't know about them.”