Poor choices

One of my high school's former football players yesterday shot and killed a man. This kid (now almost 20) was just plain dumb. He was in SpEd, so that's how I knew him. Not a mean bone in his body, but if provoked he would fight.

This is a kid who was almost never in class. He was one of the elite, a football player, an athlete, so he could pretty much write his own ticket in school. He roamed the halls and dropped in here and there to talk to people. He was pretty much untouchable. Agreeable for the most part, always smiling, but dumb as dirt, did very little work, but was scooted along and tolerated in class because he was a football player.

He lives in the worst possible part of town on a street that no one in their right mind would walk down after dark. Crowds of angry young men (why are they always angry? Upset about not having the advantages of other people? Then for God's sake, quit whining about it and do something about it--WORK!!!) congregate on the corners all night long. The police department is making an effort to let their presence be known there during the night, parking at one end and slowly making their way to the other. People will come outside--at 3 a.m.--to thank them for being there. But the angry young men will either bolt, confront them ("I didn't do nuthin" without being accused of anything), or just stand and watch.

This kid was given every possible chance by the school's principal (a lady who cares about these troubled kids as if they were her own); his SpEd teacher took him to the doctor (and paid the bill) when he was sick, fed him, took him to football practice, things which his crack-ho of a mother (okay, she was on crack, I'm not sure about the ho part) couldn't be bothered to do. His father is in prison and has been most of the kid's life. He had at least two prior felonies (relatively minor assault and battery--at least, minor when compared to cold-blooded murder) and the teacher's husband, a criminal defense attorney, had defended him (taking payments because the family couldn't pay it all at once). He is livid; he's worked with this kid for years, seeing another side of him (the big, dumb, lazy, easy-going athlete), but the man who was killed was the attorney's friend. This man heard the fight building steam, at 1 a.m. (and it's freezing here at night, literally, so what are these dumb asses doing outside at that hour anyway???), and ran outside to break it up. The newpaper says that several 911 calls were made about the fight, but by the time the first police arrived, shots had already been fired.

You've heard, "I've got your back, man"? Well, yesterday I found out what that means. It means that if you're dissed, your "man" will fight for you. The kid who was dissed is a total waste of carbon and oxygen, a lazy, whiny bastard (he wasn't in SpEd, but I worked with him in a class three years ago), was afraid that he was going to get hurt, so he ran and got this kid, who had his back. And who will now spend the rest of his life in prison, because he was stupid enough to have a gun and bring it outside with him, so he could have that bastard's back.

My God.