The Boy Who Made It
I have coached and taught this young man for the last two years almost every single day. He is a good runner and an average student. He is extremely quiet, but not shy. I’ve always known there was more to him, but I never pried.
Last week after school one day, he showed up to my room with an odd kind of smile on his face. “You read my story?” he asked. I had assigned each student the task of writing an autobiography. His was one that wouldn’t leave my mind. “Yes,” I read it, I said.
“You’re asking me to write about some crazy stuff,” he said. “I don’t tell these things to anybody.”
He continued, telling me that “all that stuff is true.” He was left at an orphanage by his mother, who was 15 or 16 when she had him. For the first two years of his life, he was passed to three different orphanages. By an act of God, his grandmother found him when he was moved to a shelter in the inner city. He’s lived with his grandmother ever since. His mother also now lives there. He said it took a long time for him to forgive her for what she did early in his life. He said he’ll never trust her or anyone else in the world. The last person he trusted was his 4th grade teacher, who said she’d do anything to help him. He loved her, he said. But then she up and quit her job.
Though he was an infant when he was passed around like that and he can’t remember any details, he said there’s always been an unsettled feeling in him like he didn’t belong where he was and that no one wanted him. On the day he was telling me this, he said he had met with a lawyer, who is sent by the state to check up with him twice a year. He also meets with a case manager once a month. “I’m sick of it,” he said.
Later that week, he was accepted to a small rural college about an hour outside of the city. Again, he came into my room after school with a hesitant smile to tell me this great news. I couldn’t be prouder of him. He’s a kid who has not had help. He’s attended a crap high school in a crap school system and has been tracked by the state since birth. His father was out of jail long enough last year to get himself in trouble with the law and put away again. No one from his family has ever been to one of his track or cross country meets.
Still, there’s a spirit that makes this kid trust himself. I see it in him when he runs the mile race on the track. I know he’s hungry and doesn’t have a good diet at home, but he plugs away at this grueling event, and can almost break five minutes. He isn’t entirely sure where he’s going or what he’s going to do with his life. But he knows that he’s sick of what he’s grown up seeing in his family, school and city. I take no credit for his success, nor should anyone else. This is a kid who is pulling himself up in spite of a society that’s been passing him around since the day he was born.