"N" Returns

"N" walked into our office again on Wednesday afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised as I wasn't sure whether I would see him again.

Yes, we had a great talk that first day in my office. He told me he was ready to get his life on track. Being the hopeless optimist that I am I was more than ready to believe him. After all if he wasn't determined to make a new start, why would he -- alone among his "Tribe" buddies -- risk climbing the stairs to a strange place to bare his soul to a relative stranger? But during our first talk I couldn't help but see that he was nervous and hesitant. He had a way of pausing in mid-sentence and gasping for air as he shared parts of his story with me. Would he have the strength to make a clean break from his old habits and old friends and claw his way out of the hole? Hard to tell. After that first meeting, I simply told him to go away, think about our discussion for a few days, and come back if he wanted to talk some more.

So here he was. Back for more. Among the many "regrets" he spoke of was the fact that he had been such a disappointment to his family. One of his goals now was to show them he could amount to something and eventually pay his mother back for her support -- support which he acknowledged is critical to him during a time immediately after prison when he has no job and no place to live. Maybe this is exactly what he needs, I thought, a sense of purpose as he pulls his live together, step by hard step.

At the end of our little talk I gave him a copy of a form we use with our high school students. We call it the "Game Plan". Each of them takes the time to fill it in, starting with short term and long term goals and then moving on to all the little steps it will take to reach these goals -- steps related to personal attitude, friends, education, family and more. The idea is for a completed Game Plan to serve as a personal guide to the future. And a signed Game Plan is meant to signify a commitment to that future. Would N take the time to fill it out? Would the very idea of a Game Plan be too much for him at this stage? I sent him off with his homework assignment, once again unsure whether I would see him again.

Digging Out

Sometimes, a hole is dug so deep it's hard to imagine climbing out. "N" has dug such a hole for himself. He had surprised me by walking into our office one Monday afternoon early this fall. The previous Saturday morning while feeding a parking meter on Atlantic Street I had met N along with his crew of five friends. The six of them were sauntering down street looking for all the world like a group of toughs well worth avoiding. But one of them, "C", whom I have known over the years in previous mentoring days, stopped to say hello. He introduced his buddies as members of the "Tri-State Tribe", a group of musicians-rap artists just beginning to get their musical act together and looking for local gigs.

Somehow our brief conversation veered into the area of failures in school, "mistakes made", and future uncertainties. These guys, twenty-somethings all, each clearly knew a thing or two about falling off the path. The more we talked, the more the "Tribe" represented not so much a promising musical act, but a collective state of drift. Addressing some combination of C and the group as a whole, I pointed to the logo on our door and said, "come up and see me any time and we'll talk some more".

When N arrived that next Monday it took me a minute or two to place him. He reminded me that he was one of the "Tribe" and had taken my words about talking some more to heart. He told me that the other guys weren't "ready", but he definitely needed to talk to me. His story was a tough, but familiar one: blew off high school, ran with the wrong crowd, used and sold drugs, left prison only recently and still on probation. The "bad news," I told him, is that he has dug an incredible hole for himself -- no GED or high school degree, no job, and a record that will always be with him, just like the tattoos he had acquired along the way.

But, optimist that I am, I couldn't help but slant our conversation to the "good news": he is only 22; has his entire life still ahead of him and that anyone who tells him that he can't turn his life around at his age is way off base. Most importantly, I told him, there are people out there who would love to give him a helping hand -- people who will be interested in his "story" and will want to play a role in helping him re-write it. It would be a story about digging out, overcoming huge obstacles and finding a place in this world. Who wouldn't love to be part of a story like that!But, of course, the burdon would be on N to show these people that he, in fact, has the shovel in his hands and is willing to do the heavy digging.

In the weeks to come, N was to become an unofficial member of FUTURE 5 ("unfunded" as we say in non-profit speak) and I had the chance to watch this excavation project unfold......