Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets

by Beatrice Sparks

  “Hadn’t thought about it…but it feels true. A teacher, or someone, once told us that ‘if you aren’t happy and at peace with the place or the people where you are, you aren’t going to be happy and at peace with yourself or the people where you’re going, no matter where it is.’”

  “That, as you say, ‘feels true to me.’”

  “I wonder if trying to have love and hate in your life at the same time isn’t about as impossible as a bird trying to fly up and down at the same time.”

  “Which do you think is the stronger force?”

  “I suspect love would be if we’d let it.”

  “I agree. I believe love and respect for self and others is the answer to the world’s problems, as well as to our own.”

  “I wish like everything that I’d gotten out of that hellhole and gone back to Mom’s when I first sensed that I was in a dangerous situation.”

  “Do you think next time you’re in a traumatic predicament you can be in control of yourself instead of allowing them or it, whoever or whatever, to control you?”

  “I hope I’ll never have to face anything like that in my life again.”

  “Probably not exactly like that, but you will face other difficult situations, everyone does.”

  “Well…I may not handle all situations perfectly in the future, but I certainly will be more prepared to keep my control buttons to myself.”

  “Then you’ve learned one of the greatest lessons anyone can learn!”

  “Just too bad I had to learn it in such a hard way.”

  “If you’re sure you’ve learned how to respect and appreciate your absolute and sacred self-control mechanism which no one else should ever be allowed to master, except you, we will soon be ready to go on to dumping the last of the putrefying garbage of your past once and for all.”

  Sammy looked pained. “One more thing. I’m not sure how I’ll face…school on Monday. Trying to go from the gang thing back to my old friends isn’t going to be that easy.”

  “None of us were ever told that life would be easy, only that it would be worth the effort! What about telephoning a couple of your old buddies, explaining what has happened in your life—of course, without gory specifics—and asking them to forgive you and accept you back as a friend?”

  “That sounds more scary than…most anything. Got any other bright suggestions?”

  “No. Sooner or later you’re going to have to, one way or another, face those you’ve hurt or embarrassed or whatever and make amends and rebuild bridges. I know you can do it! You’re a bright kid, and you deserve better than what you have mainly dealt out to yourself.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Okay. You’re a bright kid and you deserve…”

  “Enough, already. I’ll try. No! I’ll do it. I’ll talk to the principal, and I’ll get my mom or someone to take me to school and bring me back, and I’ll…”

  Sammy shuddered. He was wondering, as was I, if the gang would make him “jump out” as he had jumped in—with a merciless beating by five gang members. I doubted he could stand such punishment in his weakened state and suggested maybe he should have home schooling for a while.

  He grinned from ear to ear. “No thanks! Say good-bye to the new Smiling Sunshine Sam who is going off to fight and win both his physical and mental wars by himself.” He crossed his heart. “I hope!”

  SUMMARY OF SESSION

  Giving away personal self-control buttons.

  Facing being “jumped out” of a gang.

  Possibility of home schooling.

  Calling an old friend, explaining his past, and asking for support.

  Samuel Gordon Chart

  Wednesday, August 24, 4:30 P.M.

  Seventh Visit

  SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old

  “Yo, Sammy. You look great.”

  “You mean like you weren’t expecting to see me all in one piece?”

  “Hey, I wish you hadn’t asked that question.”

  “I knew you were worried about the ‘gang thing,’ and don’t think I wasn’t! I’ve heard some pretty scary stories about kids trying to be ‘jumped out’ of a gang. I wasn’t too concerned about the other stuff. Actually everything went even smoother than I ever dreamed it could. Probably because like you suggested, I called my friend Marv, who I’ve known since we were in grade school, and told him just a little about what a mixed-up, screwup I’d been. I told him, too, how I wanted to repent and come back. I used the word ‘repent’ because we used to go to Sunday school together sometimes when we were little.

  “We blabbed for hours, talking about our nutty old English teacher who made us read gooey poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in front of the class, and the time we were playing team tennis and I came up behind him for a ball, and his backswing hit me in the head so hard that I googled out on the court. We laughed till we cried. It was wow! And I really did feel like maybe someday I would be able to live back in the olden, no hassle, no hang-up days.”

  “I knew you could do it.”

  “I don’t think I could have done it without knowing that you knew I could do it before I even knew I could do it.”

  “It looks like you’ve still got some work to do in the self-esteem, self-confidence area, BUT I’ll be behind you; your coach, your mentor, your pep squad, your leader, your teacher, your booster, your admirer, your I-know-you-can-do-it, your positive thinker, your light turner-onner. All those things and more. Also I’ll give you a couple of books that will help you to help yourself if you’ll let them.”

  “Adults have a lot of self-help books, but I’ve never seen one especially for kids. Why don’t you write a self-help book just for kids?”

  “If I ever do, I’ll dedicate it to you, promise! Now on with your life.”

  “Well, after I talked to Marv I felt so good I called Tommy Tompkins. He’s always been like the major class clown. Me and him have been buds for years, too. For the first few minutes after I called, Tommy and I were both kind of uncomfortable, and his sister kept bugging him for the phone, but when we finally got to really talking from our guts, it was stratospheric. He understood more than I ever thought he could, and he said he wanted more than anything else to be my friend again and to help me get better in my head and my heart.”

  “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, w
ould 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!”