Mine or Yours? [Erica, Frogtown neighbor]

Emily came home from school especially hungry one afternoon. She told me that for the previous couple of weeks, part of her lunch was missing by the time she got to the cafeteria. In fact, it was the same item missing every time and her favorite part of her lunch – a tube of berry yogurt.

She thought she knew who might be taking the food from her locker, but she hadn’t told anyone about it before our conversation that day. I think she was motivated by a desire to protect the suspect, who already got into more than her fair share of trouble.

My instinct as a mother and citizen was to put a stop to the stealing. Emily could talk to her teacher. I could call the school. She and her friends could hide out and try to catch her classmate in the act. This train of thought seemed normal. I quickly played out the scenarios in my mind, subconsciously gauging the probable success of each option. Intervening didn’t just seem like the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. How could we let this wayward child get away with thinking that stealing was okay? If we didn’t put a stop to it, who knows what criminal activity might be in her future?

But, something stopped me from opening my mouth. For a split second I wondered if there was another option, another way. Seconds turned into minutes and my mouth blessedly stayed closed. Something in me was drawn to the possibility of breaking the pattern of reactionary, punitive approaches to disagreeable behavior. What else could we do?

Being the middle of three children, I got an early education in the laws of “mine” and “yours.” Sometimes the dividing lines in my shared bedroom were made visible by tape, string or a line of shoes. Most times the lines were implied yet understood and respected. As I got older, I didn’t need visible lines or long negotiations because I had developed an intuitive sense of personal space and boundaries. I kept track of my things and generally left everything else alone unless invited otherwise (with the exception of my sister’s closet, which is universally forgiven after adolescence).

This lesson on my relationship to possessions has shaped my worldview and, therefore, my behavior. I am generally grateful for this – I would have been quite a societal misfit had I not learned these lessons early on. The downside is that these laws of “mine and yours” became almost absolute. Sharing “my things” felt strange and gradually became the exception to the rule of hoarding and protecting what belonged to me. As with most patterns learned in childhood, this was soon embedded in my brain as the normal, acceptable and right way to live. And generally, it probably is. But this experience with my eight-year-old daughter was sparking a re-thinking of these patterns and leading me to imagine a looser interpretation of “mine and yours.”

I saw this as not only a teachable moment for my daughter to learn how to face problems like this, but it was an important moment for me. Is someone in her mid-thirties capable of re-imagining human interactions and changing patterns of thought and behavior? I am a glass-is-half-full kind of person, so I hoped so. Here was a chance to put it to the test.

Before fully forming a complete strategy in my head, I threw out an idea to my daughter, who was by this point finishing her after-school snack and only halfway paying attention: “What if tomorrow we put two tubes of yogurt in your lunch box?” What if, in anticipation of another visit from her mischievous friend, we chose to share instead of hoard?

Emily steadied her spoon and looked at me. I could see her mind processing this unusual solution. Perhaps she was expecting her friend to take both and she would still be left without a full lunch. Or what if her other friends found out and teased her for being nice to the class outsider? She didn’t say “no” right away, so I pushed it a bit further and suggested something more: “What if you also wrote a note and attached in to the second yogurt, showing that you know what is going on and mentioning that you have something in common – you both like yogurt?”

This evoked a sly smile, like she wasn’t sure if I was serious or if this last part was a clue that I had been teasing all along. I insisted there was a way to do it with minimal chance of embarrassment to her. My daughter bravely agreed to give this route a try. We got out pen and paper and Emily penned a note that said something like, “Enjoy the yogurt. I am glad you like it. I like it too, so please save one for me.”

Such a small thing and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it that whole next day. The reality is that we have more than enough food in the house. As soon as that box of yogurt was gone, we could afford to go to the store and by another. Our kids have never known a day of hunger in their lives. And although I am not certain that the stealing was motivated by hunger, there is a strong chance of it as our kids go to a school where over 90% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced lunch. Regardless of the student’s motivation to take the food, the issue was becoming less about her and more about us. There is just too much we don’t know about other people’s behavior so we can only stick with deciding our own. In this case, will we share or hoard?

Sharing felt really good.

I recognize there are risks to approaching adverse behavior this way and I am not sure how this strategy would work when the stakes are high. Admittedly, the stakes couldn’t have been much lower than they were in this scenario.

But there is also a risk in teaching our children to be strictly governed by the laws of “mine” and “yours.” This worldview too easily sets people up to be enemies or threats. In a simple way, our daughter had a chance to do the unexpected and show kindness instead of retribution or malice. It was wrong of this classmate to steal, and we made sure Emily understood that. But I felt it would also be wrong of us to teach our daughter that the only ways to respond would be to either ignore it or turn it into something that could break up a friendship.

We don’t know of any changes in this other student’s life. We do know of a change in ours. The tiny spark of a “what if…” question and the resulting experiment in kindness was strangely liberating and has opened our eyes to new possibilities.

That next afternoon Emily came home a little less hungry. She made it to lunch with her meal intact and felt more satisfied. The extra yogurt was gone and the note was left in her lunchbox. This continued for about the next two weeks and then the mid-morning visits to Emily’s locker stopped. We like to think the student is now reformed and no longer sees stealing as an option.

Or maybe she just doesn’t like yogurt anymore.

In North [Heidi, North Minneapolis neighbor]

This compelling post is from Heidi H's blog, "Life with Little People": http://hhaines.blogspot.com/. Heidi, Stephen, and their two little people live in the Hawthorne neighborhood of North Minneapolis. Thank you, Heidi, for sharing your gift-of-words with us!]

In North I bring my kids out onto the front porch where they can play and watch the usual activities of the neighborhood; it is a very busy neighborhood. There are kids running everywhere, a continuous stream of cars, and a constant trickle of pedestrians, as our house is on the way to the bus stop. On any given afternoon I can look out my front door and see a football game commencing in the largest area of free space available for activities: the street. There are clusters of children everywhere, all interacting, all joining together in one big unsupervised play-date.

In North people actually use their front porches a lot. We have a grill on ours that we use regularly. Our five-year-old neighbor Jonathan has tried to buy steak and hamburger dinners from us. Sometimes, if we see him playing outside before we start cooking, we will add extra for him.

In North I was sitting out on my front porch one day when I met Kelly. She was waiting for her kindergartner to get off the bus. We started chatting and she told me how she had just moved into the neighborhood from Northeast, she didn’t really like North because it was too violent. She is 25 years old and she has seven kids, the oldest is eleven and her youngest is two weeks older than my seven-month-old. She had her first baby in eighth grade and she is proud of the fact that she has just one baby daddy. She has been with him more than half her life and he was eighteen years older than her when they met. We talk several times a week now while she is waiting at the bus stop, and we’ve been invited to her birthday party.

In North my daughter asks, in two-year-old fashion, “What are them doing?” when she hears people conversing through shouts from opposite ends of the block. I say, “They are talking to each other.” She tries to copy them, yelling out unintelligible noises. I try to tell her that it is not nice to shout at people like that, but to her it is just what people do. It’s just another way to have a conversation.

In North I am starting to recognize homeless faces. My neighbor knows several of their names and though I don’t yet, I will someday. For now I give them cash and feel sad when the nights get colder and colder because they are the same faces that I saw standing out there the last time the nights got colder and colder. I wonder how they keep hope. If I don’t have cash, at least I offer them a smile, just to say, “Hey, I notice you.”

In North a snowy afternoon might bring several different groups of elementary entrepreneurs to our door, asking if they can shovel our sidewalks. If we have cash we say yes, even if that means we usually need to shovel again after they are done. If we have cookies we pass them out, but we don’t invite them in for hot chocolate and I am not sure why.

In North the police, fire trucks, and ambulance can arrive on the scene at lightning speed. When my baby was born in the backseat of the car last February, I could hear sirens in the distance before my husband even hung up his 911 call. Amidst all the standard crazy day-to-day activity, the quick arrival time makes me feel safer.

In North it is not every parent’s dream to have a park just two short blocks away from home. My husband was at the park with the girls one day and heard gun shots on the other side of the community center, less than 50 yards away from where my babies were playing. When I put my daughter to bed that night she described to me, “Them cars caught them. Cars wif lights. They went up the hill. The kids were runnin’. Them cars caught them. Why did them do that?” I didn’t have an answer for her.

In North there are times I don’t bring my daughters outside in the middle of the afternoon because I don’t want them to see that the neighbors across the street have gotten so angry they are throwing punches. I don’t want them to see one neighbor holding the other neighbor against the wall, fists pounding, until the cop car races up.

In North nighttime can be even more eventful than daytime. One night I awoke at 2:00am during a raging thunderstorm, while still lying in bed I looked out the window and saw the back of two little heads about 20 inches from my face. A dad and his five kids, their ages about three to eleven years old, were camped out on our lawn chairs on our porch under a No Trespassing sign. The police did not believe this man and his children had walked from an impossibly long distance away. They said they were waiting for Grandma to come and pick them up, as Mom was too drunk for them to go home. After calling Grandma, to re-explain the whole situation and remind her why she was picking them up, she arrived five minutes later. The six of them piled into a five-passenger car with Grandma, and the police watched them drive away.

In North gunshots woke me up around 5:00am. I looked out my bedroom window to see three men pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of our house. One of them was on the phone, agitated, and I was glad that someone was calling 911. A car screeched to a halt at the corner. It seems, instead, they were mad because their ride was late. One of the men pulled a gun out of his pocket and they got into the car. He unloaded his weapon into the air before they squealed away. I am not sure what he was trying to say, but I heard him loud and clear.In North we were also woken up a week before Christmas at 4:00am by someone pounding on the door. When we didn’t answer immediately, we heard, “Police! Open up!” The cops wanted to know if we had heard or seen anything unusual in the past few hours. Yellow crime tape stretched from the corner of our front porch and to the stop sign on the other side of the street. We found out later that a man was shot and killed a couple of houses down the block. We didn’t hear a thing.

In North the next time someone was shot and killed on our street it happened before 10:00pm, while we were still awake. We were sitting at the kitchen table when it suddenly seemed like there was an overly decorated Christmas display on the other side of our drapes. We looked out our kitchen window to see an entire fleet of emergency vehicles appear within two or three minutes. We went outside and overheard someone say they saw a body lying in the street less than half a block away. It was dark and we couldn’t see anything. Our entire intersection was soon blocked off with the yellow crime tape. Two kids, trying to get home, crossed it and got thrown onto the hood of a police car and patted down. Most of the neighborhood showed up. Detectives followed, along with a news crew. People gathered on our front lawn and when they heard the news of who had died some fell to the ground, screaming and wailing. We listened to it while we lay in bed and tried to fall asleep. The next day when we looked out our kitchen window we could see balloons and flowers marking the spot where our neighbor had fallen and died.

In North we are surrounded by empty houses. Five of the six houses directly surrounding our corner are vacant. They are boarded up and condemned. Soon after we moved in we took a walk down the block and counted the houses on our street that we could tell were vacant. From our corner down to the other end of the block were 16 boarded-up houses. Now these houses are falling down around us. The city has decided to bring in cranes and trucks and knock them down. This rocks my daughter’s world. She keeps asking me, “Where did it go? What happened?” We woke her up early one morning so that she could watch as the house across the street was reduced to a pile of boards and bricks; we hoped it would help her understand. Honestly, though, the bizarreness of it all rocks my world too. Especially when it’s the next day, when people scrounging through the massive pile of rubble, pulling out the aluminum siding to sell. It looks like scene from a third world country. Now I don’t know if I want my daughter to see and understand, to think this is normal. There is nothing normal about it.

In North you can hear on the new about a man getting shot and killed on a sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon, and that might mean something to you. It means something else to see a little 10 year old girl strip down to her t-shirt and jeans on the street when the weather is below zero so that she can teach her friend how to win a fist fight. While bouncing around with her fists in the air she says, “You don’t ever wear no hood. They can grab onto that so fast and pull you down. Make sure you don’t wear no hoods.”

In North we have a fire bowl out on our 8x16 piece of lawn. This is where we hang out with friends and meet our neighbors. We met Rob, who sat down to bum a smoke from one of our friends and ended up staying for a couple of hours. Our next encounter with Rob was when he stopped by to see if he could do some yard work for us to make five dollars. We said sure and gave him ten. He was really excited that he could not only buy cigarettes, but toilet paper as well. A few weeks later he knocked on our door at 11:00pm to tell us that he had just been in the hospital with a bleeding stomach ulcer. He wanted to know if my husband would sit on the porch with him and drink a beer. My husband said, “Sure, let me get dressed first.” I went back to bed.

Jesus shows up everywhere...[Ben, Urban Neighbor]

[This is an excerpt from an audio interview with Ben, an Urban Neighbor in North Minneapolis. To hear the full .mp3 audio version, go to: http://urbanhomeworks.com/?page_id=312]

Seeing God at work here in the city is almost a constant thing once you start seeing things through the eyes of a Kingdom perspective. You begin to see glimpses of hope in kids’ eyes. As you pour into their lives, they begin to grasp this idea that maybe things could be different. Or seeing the hope that’s already here… You see Christ at work everywhere if you have eyes to see it. You can see his heart beating throughout the city, his heart beating for things that break his heart. When you’re in tune with the things that Jesus was passionate about, you begin to see him just showing up everywhere, and it’s incredible.

Thanksgiving with Karen Refugees [Sara, Urban Neighbor]

Have you ever had dreams fulfilled in a backwards sort of way? I’ve been realizing God puts dreams and passions on our hearts not only for us, but also for others. About eight years ago as a young teenager I heard about the Karen people (pronounced Ka-REN) of Southeast Asia,from the country of Myanmar (Burma). Many of them were Christians and had been oppressed by their government. I got many Karen items like a traditional skirt, shirt and bag through an organization who supports these persecuted Christians. I became divinely obsessed with this people group and I gave a presentation on their plight and culture in my ninth grade world cultures class. I’ve always wanted to go to the area of the world where they live and visit them.

I heard several years ago that Karen people were moving to the Twin Cities. When I moved to Saint Paul this fall, I had some random connections that led me to begin tutoring two Karen women my age in English. I was so excited to finally get to know some of these people God had put on my heart! These two had just arrived to America this summer. One of them had lived in a refugee camp for 10 years. The other is here in a new land without father (passed away) or mother (still in Asia). I have befriended them and helped them with things from trying to understand insurance to learning how to bake muffins. Through the generous donation of food from YouthWorks staff, my Urban Homeworks house was able to put on a Thanksgiving dinner for my students and a bunch of their relatives. The sixteen guests enjoyed the night and loved playing jenga and spoons.

So this is what I mean by having my dreams fulfilled in a backwards sort of way. Instead of going to visit the Karen people in Asia, God has brought them to me and enabled me to bless them here. I still dream to go to Asia to see them and perhaps I will. But it’s not just about me and my dreams, is it? God knew they would be coming and so he put them on my heart so that I would have joy to minister to them here. God is so good, isn’t he? He gives us passions for a purpose beyond ourselves. He gives us dreams to give us joy through giving joy to others.

There are about 3,000 Karen in the Twin Cities and there will be many more coming. They need furniture and clothes when they arrive. If you would like to donate I have contact information. They also need friends and English help. Many of them are our brothers and sisters in Christ. “Therefore as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Galatians 6:10 NIV).

To see a short video about the Karen people: http://www.vimeo.com/2139064
Here is a blog concerning the Karen story from the Karen Community of Minnesota: http://minnesotakaren.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html

Want to assist the Karen?

Contact me at purplelilacs@juno.com.

Or, here is contact information for social service to the Karen:
Wilfred D. Tun Baw
Project Manager
Karen Support Project
C/O Vietnamese Social Services of Minnesota
1159 University Avenue, Suite # 100
Saint Paul, MN 55104
Tel: (651) 645-5940 (W)/ (651) 789-0168 (W)
Fax: (651) 641-8908
E-mail: wilfredshwe@vssmn.org

"14" [Leah E., Urban Neighbor]

I am doing homework across the table from a 14 year old.
She is a freshmen in high school. The school she attends doesn't have the best reputation in South Minneapolis. A few of us at the Oakland house have known her since she was in 4th grade. She is making a powerpoint for her Geography class.

She had to write about the 5 best places in her neighborhood. One of the places she chose to write about was our house! A few of her cousins were over last week and they said "Being at your house is like a retreat from our lives..."

It broke my heart to hear them say that. Yet, I hope as these girls continue to grow up they will know our house is a safe place to eat, laugh, and talk to each other in.

They are prayed for in this home.

As inadequate as we may feel at times, I pray that they will know that they are not defined by their surroundings, and instead they will recognize how beautiful and talented they are.

[to read more from Leah's blog, go to http://celebratingthekingdom.blogspot.com]

To be seen and known [Sarah W., Urban Neighbor alum]

If there’s one thing I learned through my time as an Urban Neighbor, it’s that people want to be seen and known for who they really are. It’s easy to shove people in the city into boxes: the poor, welfare moms, gang-bangers, addicts, the homeless. During my years with Urban Homeworks I have learned to see people more like how Christ sees them: kids with hopes and dreams, women with huge hearts, men who’ve made mistakes. When you enter into a relationship with someone, you get to really see them and know them. The relationships I have built with my neighbors have blessed me in so many ways. I wish I had hours to tell you every single story: the neighborhood pizza nights, the ice cream parties, the cook-outs, Thanksgiving banquets, the tutoring. I have been filled with lots of love for my neighbors, and my heart breaks to see them struggling through life. There is one story I will share with you all.

Terri is a middle aged mom who lives with her family downstairs from me. I am amazed at this woman. Despite living in poverty, dealing with diabetes, renal failure, and heart disease, she gives and gives and gives. She has taken in two children who are not her own and I know she would take in more if she could. I love Terri, and I love getting to hang out with her family. We’ve had some incredible times together: pow-wows, cook-outs, birthday parties. Words cannot express how much this relationship means to me, or the ways that Christ has shown himself to me through it. For a woman to be dealing with so much and to still have the heart to remember things like my birthday . . . it just blesses me. Last year she bought me a pair of Native American earrings and had her whole family sign the card. It is humbling and inspiring to know such a person. Often, people think it’s the Urban Neighbors’ job to change or impact neighbors, but Terri has changed my life by being an example of love, dedication, and perseverance.

All that to say we’re not just neighbors anymore, it feels more like family. I know Terri, and she knows me. I know her favorite color is red and that she likes to dress babies in old-fashioned clothes. She can tell when I’ve had a bad day at work or if I’ve got a new crush. There are not many secrets between us. So when I get a call at 11:30 at night and Terri is wanting to come up for a cup of tea, I know there is more to it. So I get out of bed, put on the kettle, and hug Terri as she tells me how her oldest daughter is dealing drugs again, her son is back in jail, she can’t afford her heat, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to make it. Now I want more than anything to fix things for her, to make her pain go away. But I can’t. Being an Urban Neighbor is great, but it doesn’t give me superhuman powers to fix the world. So I do what I can, what God asks me to, and share in her troubles by listening, praying, and feeling the hurt with her. And we both go back to bed. It breaks my heart that I get to wake up the next morning to a cup of good coffee and my job, but Terri wakes up just to go through it all again. But I thank God that she does make that midnight phone call. Or when my neighbor Amanda calls crying because she thinks she got an STD, or when Frank, my friend’s son, calls because he and his mother got put out of another shelter. Because even though they are hurting, they know they are not alone. And for me, that’s what being an Urban Neighbor is all about. In my attempts to live like Christ, I get to see people: the welfare moms, gang-bangers, addicts, and homeless, beyond the circumstances that got them those taglines. I get to journey through life with them, sharing in their burdens when the load gets heavy, celebrating with them in the times in between.

Letter from an Inner City Kid [from the Burnside Writers Collective]

[From the Burnside Writers Collective, http://www.burnsidewriterscollective.com/. Note: This piece contains csome contextual profanity].

To the caring and capable adult who wants to help me, but sometimes does not want to see me;
To the one who plays with me, and who shows me lots of fun, but then like a grandparent, sends me home again when I get too tiring;
To the one who faithfully comes into the neighborhood twice a week and never misses an appointment;
To the one who really does love me with all their heart, but who still recoils when I get too close because of my smell, or my runny nose, or my ringworm;
To the one who buys me stuff, even though I ain’t their kid;
To the one who reads books with me, and helps me with my homework, and mentors me, and comes to my court review.
This letter is for you.

Thank you.

I don’t say that very often, do I? At least, not in ways you hear. Even though I may not show outward signs of appreciation, you must realize how important you are to me. You take time out of your busy life to come and visit me. I am a kid you don’t know too well, and one you don’t fully trust, but you come see me anyway. You are not my mamma or her baby daddy, and the courts didn’t make you come here. So when you spend time with me, I know it is because you want to. I’m too tough to tell you, but I need that kind of care. I crave it. I love you for doing it.

But you got to remember that you and me are different, okay? You got to remember that there are some things that I know better than you.
You drive into my neighborhood to work, but I live here all the time.
That’s not a bad thing, I am glad you come to see me. But you got to remember that you’re the guest here. You are not in charge all the time. You don’t always set the agenda.
Long after you leave, I will still be here.
When you are waking up for work and drinking your morning coffee, I am dragging my younger siblings out of bed and dressing them and making sure they eat something so we can get to the bus stop on time. And I don’t wake mamma.
When you are sleeping in your bed at night, I am curled up in a trembling mass in the corner of a shadowy den hoping and praying that my new daddy don’t come home drunk again.
I know you want to help, but you got to remember you don’t make the rules.
I need to drive sometimes. I know I am a little kid, but there are some things that I know better than you.You forget that sometimes, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
I know you like to visit me, but I also know that I scare you. You come from somewhere different than me and you can’t figure out why I act like I do.

For example, when you give popcorn to the kid on my left, I want some too. Do I simply ask for some, or patiently wait my turn? You wish I would.
“Hey! No fair! Why does he get popcorn? Where’s mine? Gimme some!”
This is my default.
There is a whining sound in my voice that annoys you, or I sound angry and aggressive.
What I want to say is this: “The popcorn looks delicious. I would like to have some, please.”
But I don’t know how to say that.
You tell me I have poor manners. You tell me I am rude. Well, I don’t know much about that, but I do know that you are trying to rip me off.
At home, and everywhere else I go, the assumption is that I am going to get screwed. See, I live with my mom and her boyfriend, and he has kids of his own that he brought with him when he moved in with us. And my brother has a different dad too.
At my house, there are favorite kids. At my house, I don’t get a new toy just because my brother did. At my house, I get left out.
But my mamma doesn’t say anything because it might make Joey mad. So, at my house, I am on my own.
Then you come along, and you seem nice enough. But how do I know that there is enough popcorn for me? How do I know that you are going to serve me just like you served that other kid? How do I know that you won’t ignore me?
I don’t.
I don’t know until I can trust you. Because, even though I am here in a church or school or kids club, I forget that I don’t have to fight. I forget that you try to be fair.
So, I will demand popcorn if I have to.

I say “fuck” a lot. And “bitch” and “shit” and “pussy.” You tell me I am bad, but really I am just talking like everybody else.
You got stuff you say, and I got stuff I say. It’s not because I am dumber than you, it is just my language.
I need you to fight against something. You will be tempted to judge me based on my speech patterns. My informal register will cause you to feel intellectually superior, and my use of profanity will cause you to feel morally superior.
Battle those urges with everything you’ve got.
I need you to talk to me without lecturing. I need you to include me in discussions. I don’t need condescension, I need conversation. I know you’re convinced that your language is the “correct” one and mine is somehow broken. But Jesus speaks Ebonics too.

By the way, it is okay for you to talk your talk. I don’t mind. But don’t try to mimic me, because I don’t know how to respond to that.
I don’t need someone who looks like me and sounds like me. I don’t need someone more ghetto or someone who fits into the neighborhood.
I need someone who truly cares. I need the love that turns things upside down. That will be enough.

I like to laugh, just like you do. I want to have a good time. But I laugh at different things than you.
You laugh at clever remarks and ironic situations and cunning satire.
I laugh when I tease the boy next to me until he cries. He walks funny and his clothes are too big. (My clothes are too big too, but I crucify him for it.)
Then I flip open my cousin’s cell phone and show everybody an animation I downloaded for $1.99.
It is Scooby Doo having sex with Daphne.
I laugh loud and long so everyone around me hears. I pass it around because there is great value in being the entertainer.
You tell me I am mean and inappropriate, but I don’t know how else I am supposed to laugh. The only things funny to me are people and sex. And when I showed it to my uncle, he laughed too.

That animation on my phone is the best way for you to understand me. That animation shows the clash of two worlds.
Scooby and Daphne: icons of silliness and youth.
Graphic depiction of sex: a mysterious siren song beckoning me to the big people world.
I clash with myself every day.
I am a kid, a normal kid, just like in your family. I go through all the same phases and want all the same things. I am just as likely as your kid to beg for a toy or have a scary dream or cry when I don’t get my way. I am just as likely to bite my Tootsie Pop or enjoy Dr. Seuss or forget to tie my shoe laces. And sometimes I just need a nap.
But I am also an adult, a small adult, who sees the real world every day. I go through all the same phases and want all the same things. I may not understand it, but I am likely to be intrigued by sex and marvel over money and watch while my brother gets high. I look up to Scarface and I’m wary of police and I see through your lies about school. And sometimes I just need a drink.
I’m kind of schizophrenic. A half-kid half-adult hybrid. That’s why I can be vulgar and innocent at the same time. That’s why I will tell you of my sexual exploits in graphic detail and then ask you to blow bubbles with me. That’s why I will quote the movies “How High” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” over dinner and laugh just as loud over both of them.

You might think I have no impulse control. You might think that I am overly emotional, or terribly dramatic, or blatantly offensive. You can’t figure out why I act like I do.
You feel like you can’t get close to me because I fly off the handle every now and then, or I am cold or hostile toward your sappy Christian advances. I’m totally inconsistent and you think I may be mentally imbalanced.

You know nothing stays the same? Ask me my phone number. I probably won’t know it.
Ask for my address. I might be able to give you the street name we just moved to.
Ask me who my parent or legal guardian is, or which of those kids is really my cousin. I’m not being rude when I don’t answer. I just can’t keep up.
And I don’t know if my mom will bring home groceries, and I don’t know if I will make it to middle school. I don’t know if I am safe in my bed, and I don’t know where my daddy went. The things I don’t know far outweigh the things I do know.
I can’t control what happens to any extent, and I have trouble predicting outcomes.
Things happen to me.
I don’t wake up and plan for my day. I wake up and brace myself.

That’s why I cry at the drop of a hat, and that is why I launch into manic fits. That is why, when my brother asks for help on his homework, he may start fuming and kick the hell out of something.
We’re wearing roller skates on a merry-go-round. We can’t catch our balance and no one is helping us up.
We are trying to climb the wrong way up an icy sliding board while the bully at the top keeps throwing snow balls.
We’re in a cage match with reality, and there is no way to tap out.

And so we do things.

Maybe you’ve seen those scars on my arms. No, not the cigarette burns. Those came from something else.
I mean the cuts. Those straight and narrow cuts that criss-cross all over my skin and make patterns like a railroad track.
They look suspiciously like I put them there myself. You wonder about it when you catch a glimpse, but it takes you a couple of weeks to ask.
Let me tell you about my day. Let me tell you about my day that is the same day every day, and how boring and tedious it becomes to climb out of bed. Everything seems broken sometimes, and I don’t believe it can be fixed. There is nowhere to go from here, nothing to do.
I am bored.
Boredom leads to apathy, apathy leads to numbness, and numbness is the enemy of hope. I am the walking dead and it doesn’t take long for me to yearn to feel something. I want to feel that little sting, that rush of endorphins, that cleansing release as I purge my body of pent up self-worthlessness. I feel something. And I am in control. I am causing the sensation and no one is doing it to me. I am causing the sensation and I can make it stop.

Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Don’t talk to me! I hate you! I hate you!

I’ll run away and hide from you because you’re getting too close. I will say things just to make you hurt inside, and sometimes I get satisfaction in knowing you cried over me. I’ll cuss at you sometimes. I will jump out of your car and refuse to get back in, telling you the whole time that you are a liar who doesn’t care about me at all. Then I will walk home by myself in the rain, tossing the gift you gave me on the ground.
And I will watch over my shoulder to see you driving slowly behind me until I arrive safely at my destination.

I’m mad at you. I am not speaking to you. We both know that it’s not your fault, but I want to be mad at someone. I fume and vent, and you shrink and listen. You will try really hard in this situation, but I don’t want you to win. I want you to come back, but I don’t want you to win. I’m pissed.

I need you to be patient. Most people stick around until I lose my temper, or steal from them, or resist their love. They get tired, or hurt, or bored, or mad and I never see them again. When you wipe my spit from your face and search me out in the streets, I get it. Then I start to believe you. I’ll be baffled by your mercy and puzzled by your grace, and the yearning of my heart will be satisfied by your faithfulness. I’ll probably still act mad for a while, and I may teach you some new choice phrases. But I will also end the conversation with, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
So, thanks for reading my letter. I don’t know if you’ll understand what I am saying, I am really not that articulate. I don’t know how to express these things. Sometimes I have to wrestle with my tongue to make the words come out. But I still wanted someone to hear me out, to engage my opinions, to recognize my voice.

And I cherish you for doing that.

From the kid you want to work with, but keep at arm’s length;
From the child you pick up for church on Sunday and play basketball with on Monday;
From the one who loves your reading voice and wishes he had a dad like you;
From the boy who needs to learn to shave and the girl who needs a chick flick night;
From the 1 in 4 who is living in poverty;
From the one who is close enough to touch.
I’ll see you tomorrow.

Bring candy.