The Long Answer to a Short Question.

In the comment section of my post on Quindaro I was asked by a reader , Leigh Ann, who has about a million blogs going all at once,” How do we fix it?" I gave her the easy way out answer and said I had no idea. Well that wasn’t an entirely truthful response. So here is my answer. I apologize in advance for taking you the long way around the block, but stick with me and in the end we will get there.

Boonville Missouri State Training School for Boys. Some kids go to Penn Day or Notre Dame di Sion to get the all important middle and high school education. I received mine courtesy of the state of Missouri. I was deemed incorrigible and beyond parental control. My crime was Truancy and I was a habitual violator. The court in its infinite wisdom decided it would be in my best interest to be sent to the notorious reformatory nestled in the central Missouri farm land. Nowadays the juvenile justice system in Missouri is touted as one of the finest and used as a model that other states strive to emulate, but in the early 70's being sent to Boonville was as bad as it could get, short of being sent to an adult prison. In all fairness the courts did try other options and methods to get my mind right before washing their hands of me and sending me to that little corner of hell. I ran through those options in short time. There were alternative schools, Vocational schools, group homes, and McCune boys home, I did the full tour.

To my mothers credit she did the best she could, but working two jobs and caring for 3 kids virtually on her own there was no way to keep up with me. So after running off from McCune 3 times the court sent me to Boonville. When I arrived in Boonville it was during a transitional period. They were revamping their approach to dealing with Juveniles. During the day the place was filled with well meaning and completely clueless social workers and shrinks. At night it was pure bedlam, and probably more violent than any prison or jail I’ve been in. There was a popular saying at the time, "Fight, Fuck, or Climb a tree". I was scared of heights so I got in a lot of fights those first few months. In fact I spent more time in disciplinary lock down the first 6 months I was there, than I spent in general population.

I don’t want to give the wrong idea here, I wasn’t a tough guy, I didn’t like fighting. But I had 3 strikes against me when I first set foot in Boonville. I was 14, the average age was 16. I had long hair and was a good looking kid, if I do say so myself. And I was white. That’s right, being white made me something that most people don’t associate with being Caucasian, I was a minority. So I fought , raised hell and earned a reputation as a trouble maker. I spent 20 months in Boonville when the average stay was 6 to 9 months.

It wasn’t a big leap for me to continue to raise hell and generally screw up once I was released. I was pissed at the world, and had a chip the size of the sprint center on my shoulder. So if I seem to have some empathy for these young guys from the inner city that do heinous shit, its not because I think they are blameless, I don’t. But I do understand that anger and getting dealt a bad hand does have some major implications on the choices they make. In the end, we choose to go one way or another. We can take life’s hard lessons and be better people for it. Or we can be hardened by it all and take a path that ultimately leads us to even more trouble. I chose the latter, and it took me 25 years to figure out that I couldn’t win. I wont go so far as to say that I'm a better person for it, that all of those wrong headed years somehow transformed me in to a good person. I hear that from a lot of ex cons and former criminals. They equate going straight with some spiritual metamorphous. They make it sound like all those years of doing dirt and going straight makes them like Gandhi. That line of thought is pure unadulterated bullshit.

The truth is that most criminals will continue to be criminals until they reach middle age. They stop because they don’t want to grow old in prison and not because they have suddenly seen the error of their ways. That’s why I stopped. I take no pride in saying this, nor am I ashamed to admit that I would much prefer pulling down a large chunk of change once or twice a year and doing as I please. As much as that still appeals to me, the thought of spending another day locked up is unacceptable.

Am I a better person than I was 10 years ago? You bet I am. Is it because I am reformed and rehabilitated? If by reformed you mean I underwent a major transformation and learned the error of my ways, then no I am not. If a guy is a plumber for the majority of his adult life and changes careers at 4o and becomes an electrician, that change in his day to day life doesn’t change his way of looking at things. He will always be a plumber at heart, deep down he looks at things through the eyes of a plumber. That said , I find my life now more fullfilling and I would never return to my old ways.

So what is my point to this rambling missive? Well it goes back to those early years in Boonville. I don’t lay the blame entirely at the feet of the system. I had ample opportunity to change. I made a conscious decision to ignore the rules of society and I accept full responsibility for the decisions I made. The thing is , if there was ever a chance to turn me around, it was when I was in Boonville, those early years. Hopefully the system of dealing with young offenders has figured that if you catch a kid early and really make effective change in their surroundings and their way of thinking, then you have a shot at turning them around. If not, then eventually time or death will do the job. Hopefully I have answered Leigh Ann's question.