The power of ONE decent adult

As a young girl and teen I was in trouble a LOT during my schooling years.
I was a walking time bomb. 
Very rarely did I fight with my peers but every adult I encountered I fought with. And THEY FOUGHT BACK.
These adults that were "supposedly" trained to handle kids... couldn't handle me. (And, honestly, as I look back I don't think I was that bad a kid.)

The more detentions, suspensions, and expulsions I received the more I fought, the angrier I got, the more violent I became and guess what??? The angrier the adults got, the more vicious their words were, the rougher they physically handled me and the LESS they were able to teach me anything of value.

With every punishment I received I was also being beaten with meaningless words. All the words that could have been good for me to hear were made WORTHLESS with every syllable uttered by their hypocritical mouth's.
I trusted and listened to NO ONE.
I pulled them down to my level of communication and they stayed there. These "adults" were no better nor wiser than me but should've been. I grew more cynical from those experiences and laughed at their lack of composure and maturity as the "adults".
As the authority figures they would try to use their "power" but always succumbed to my anger, rendering them the title of a "bully". They eventually disappeared and were replaced with more bullying adults.

Between private schools and public schools almost every nun, priest, teacher, counselor and principle couldn't stand me. They didn't know what to say to me other than to resort to being mad which made it even harder for me to control my anger. 
My ability to feel, hear, and see humane emotions were numbed. 

All my young life I was told how worthless I was and so I saw no need to get better nor did I want to because I didn't see a reason. I had NO HOPE of seeing a better future for myself.

I had nothing to lose in living recklessly while hurting others....... until Mr. Mitchell.
 

IT ONLY TAKES ONE PERSON TO CHANGE A WHOLE LIFE. You don't need to be "perfect" just decent.

 Mr. Mitchell was my first ever "black" teacher. This was a big deal for me because I was raised in a home where blacks were spoken of in a very derogatory manner. My dad preferred that his kids didn't associate with blacks. He eventually grew out of it in his elder years but as a young girl blacks were off limits and I learned that the hard way.

Anyways, Mr. Mitchell was an older gentleman who was one of my teachers at an alternative school that I had been sent to due to my ever growing destructively, distractive manners. The school was specifically made to house "troubled students".

When I first met him he shared that some students called him "teddy bear" because he was kinda "fluffy" and liked giving out hugs. I thought it was because he looked like a teddy bear since he was always wearing a brown sweater and had brown skin. I was not receptive to his hugs.
I did, however, notice his proactive willingness to help me stay academically on course.

For ninth grade alone I attended four (or five) different high schools in four different states and I was considerably behind.
My family didn't know what to do but shuffle me around until I could stay out of trouble.  

It was the beginning of my sophomore year and I had been caught smoking again on campus by the security guards. I was with a group of other students but, for some odd reason, I was the only one who got picked on. I won't say that it was because I was the only minority within that group but I was and I decided to mention it to this guard. He ignored me and handed me a detention slip.
In exchange I threw my lit cigarette butt into his vehicle. He then said something about suspension and I upped the ante by not just getting myself expelled but getting my own personal guides off the property in cuffs.

Nothing was new and nothing surprised me, I was in trouble again and I, honestly, didn't care. I would just end up somewhere else with different faces and names. I didn't care.

I had nothing to lose... except for ONE thing.

Before I got cuffed, Mr. Mitchell asked my uniformed escorts if he could have a minute to say something to me and they allowed him a short moment and that moment changed something in me.      

He took me out of the room I was being interrogated in and sat me down on a bench. He looked at me and tears welt up and ran down his chubby brown face. He could barely speak but eventually asked if I had acted alone for what I was being accused of because it was impossible for one person to do it alone. I said nothing then stared forward into the courtyard. But at the corner of my eye I saw him remove his glasses, hang his head and heave a sob.

To this day I remember that moment very clearly because it was the first time that I had seen anyone cry for me for getting in trouble. I was use to adults giving me the cold angry stare while I'm being removed. But this was different and new. 

His tears made me question if I had some sort of value. 

To me, tears always cost someone something and it was NEVER insignificant. It always had a value attached to it. 
As a young girl, I had a very emotionally hard mother that I had only seen cry twice and it was so rare to see her show any emotion that I took a mental note of it.

The greater the heartbreak, the greater the tears, the greater the value.

Who cried for this kid? Who showed him that he had value enough that he didn't have to steal tears and souls?

There are so many of us "trouble-makers" out there who society has thrown by the wayside and all we need is ONE DECENT ADULT TO GIVE US HOPE THAT THERE IS A BETTER FUTURE IN STORE FOR US.

But, of course, this is gonna be a political upheaval on gun control or lack there of.

Here is where I stand with gun control:

• I will always protect the 2nd amendment. If a person really wants to kill someone they will kill someone whether the gun is legally owned or not. They don't need a gun to kill groups of people anyways. They can use a semi-truck to bowl people over. They can stand on a bridge over a freeway and drop large rocks on cars causing multiple crashes. They can use small box-cutters to high-jack planes and crash them into buildings. They can collect groups of people in a building, lock them in and set it on fire. There are so many ways to kill people, how far are we going to go into legislating it??
• Gun control education and regulations on how guns are propagated for entertainment value should be highly legislated. Kids should not be made to think that pulling a trigger on a video game to kill innocent bystanders is normal and that violent movies where guns are recklessly utilized is normal. In other word, normalizing reckless gun use in entertainment should be heavily regulated.
• I don't own a gun and I don't believe I ever will because I don't want to ever have to choose that as an option over walking away from a fight. Maybe one day I will own one but not today.