Re-Used Needles and Parents I Would Love to Kick

Tonite I was at a gathering of Youth from all over the region of DelMarVa-DC (Deleware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC) when the speaker told about something that happened to him recently at work.

He is a corrections officer at a prison in Baltimore and as he was going about his own business, one of the inmates came up to him and asked him point-blank "How did you manage to stay out of trouble?"

Now, the speaker, in addition to being a corrections officer, is also a Youth Pastor which explained his response to the young man, who by the way was only twenty-one.

"As I am on duty, I cannot explain to the fullest. However, let me say that I have a relationship with someone who loves me enough to give me the strength to stay out of trouble."

As he continued to tell the story, he explained how the young man's eyes began to water and he started to silently cry.

"Let me tell you my story." the young man said.

"When I was just nine years old, I was in the front yard playing with my best friend. We lived in the ghetto you see, so it wasn't anywhere near the safest place to play, but we did it anyway. All of a sudden a car came screeching around the corner and began spraying the streets with gunfire, sending bullets shooting this way and that way, all over the place. When it finally was over I looked over to see my best friend lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He had been shot! A stray bullet had hit him between the eyes, dropping him on the spot. I sat there, his head in my lap, waiting for someone to come. But no one came. No one cared. I sat for hours in shock until the police came and pried his cold, dead body out of my hands. He was only nine! He didn't have to die!"

The speaker continued by recalling, "I asked him how much longer he was incarcerated for."

"I had a ten year sentence," the young man replied, "I'm down to nine or ten months."

"That's great!" our speaker recalled replying, "That means you'll be out of here soon."

"No." the inmate said. "You see, I'm in here for murder. When I was fifteen a guy slit my brother's throat. I went and bought a gun, found the guy who killed my brother, and unloaded bullets into his body until he was no longer alive. After this sentence, I have another thirty-five year sentence I have to serve."

"Another time," the speaker said, "one of the other inmates came up to me and started telling me his story, what happened to him just prior to going to jail. He told me how there were Scumdominiums in Baltimore City. Places that were all boarded up and for the taking for anyone who was desperate. He told me how recently he had been in one with his buddies who were all high on heroine and coke when a fourteen year-old girl walked in. She picked up a used needle off the ground, prepared some heroine, stuck the needle in her arm, and shot right up. He told me the thoughts running through his mind, how she must be lost, or crazy, or both to be here, of all places and at only fourteen. So he shied up to the girl and asked her what she was doing in a place like this.

"With absolutely no emotion she said: 'Let me tell you my story...'

"'I grew up with parents who were heroine addicts. Always shooting up, night and day, day and night, partying, drinking and drugs was their life. One day while they were shooting up, I was curious and asked them what they were doing. They told me they would show me. They cooked up some heroine, grabbed a needle, stuck it in my arm and shot me up with my first ever dose of heroine. I was hooked. Addicted. All it took was that one time and I was an addict just like my parents.
"'Soon enough my parents couldn't afford to pay for both their's and my habit so they came to me and told me I was being thrown out. Not because they didn't love me, but because they loved their drugs more. They chose their drugs over me. So my father picked me up by the clothes I was wearing and threw me out the front door locking it behind me.'

"'What did you do to survive?' the convict asked her.

"'Old men love me,' she said, 'I kept going to them, doing whatever they want for a few dollars, and now... now I'm here...'

"'That messed me up,' the convict said, 'it got me thinking about why I was where I was now, and it made me angry at her parents.'"

Now, my question to You, dear Reader, is whether or not it makes you angry?

Personally, as the speaker was telling that story my fists started clenching, my teeth started gritting, and my body started shaking out of rage towards that little girl's parents. How can a mother and father love their child so little that they would choose drugs over their baby?

More importantly, what kind of #$*&!@, stupid*$&, moronic parents would shoot up their own daughter with heroine?

Are they insane!?

Because they certainly aren't altogether upstairs!

They should be locked up and have their fingers and toes cut off one by one until that little girl is repaid in full for all the pain that they caused her.

How can a parent do such a thing?

Another proof of how screwed up society is.

And another reason for me to be in the vocation I am in.

As if I needed any more.