Today I spent time rehearsing a speech that I am scheduled to deliver next week to students in a local high school. The students of the school are not labeled “at-risk,” but administrators feel that they may benefit by listening to other members of our outreach program and me. We will tell them how we began making bad decisions in our late teens, and by our early 20s those bad decisions led us into problems with the law.
When I speak, I intend to address the importance of reading. I’m not referring to reading words, sentences, and paragraphs. I want to plant a seed about the importance of reading circumstances, opportunities and options. When I was in my late teens, such ability eluded me. I wasn’t able “to read” my environment, and it was that illiteracy that led to my breaking the law. Although my bad decisions began in my late teens and continued through my early 20s, I continue paying the price for them at 46.
Schools offer a real service when they bring positive role models to address the student body. Young adults benefit by listening to community leaders who speak about their careers and the positive contributions they make to society. It takes a courageous administrator to invite a group of federal prisoners into the school, as most people in society rightfully frown upon our status as convicted felons. Nevertheless, the messages those of us in prison provide may prove helpful to impressionable minds.
By sharing our backgrounds with students, we provide them with a context of what to expect they engage in crime. It’s easy to succumb to delusions when a person is in his or her late teens. Many think of themselves as being invincible to authority or even to death. When the other prisoners speak about how they joined gangs or sold drugs in their teens, and how those decisions led to decades in prison, the students listen. When I explain how my involvement in drug trafficking led to the many years I’ve served, and how I could have enjoyed a better, more fulfilling life by learning how to read circumstances, opportunities and options, the students listen.
I’ve spoken with thousands of students and communicated through writing with thousands more.I hope that through these efforts I can contribute to safer communities. Our society enriches itself by educating citizens, and although those of us in prison may not be positive role models, we contribute by showing the consequences of bad decisions.
This morning I ran 10 miles. I followed with 600 pushups.
[consecutive running log: 3,766 miles over the past 424 days]
[pushups in 2010: 14,200]
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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