There is body shapped still remaining in the chair located in the basement. Chips are all over the floor and the bowl is slightly tipped on its side. The video game is loading and the controller has been thrown on the floor and the cord is pulled out of the system and wrapped around another chair. It is apparent that someone has left in a hurry. The kid that was sitting in the chair a few minutes ago playing the game, laughing with his friends,and eating their favorite chips is now in the hospital with a tube down his throat. He has alcohol poison and will most likely not survive the night. He was ranked number one in his class, was in all advance placement and was in almost every sport. What happened to him, he got board one day and his friends tried drugs. After they got board with drugs they tried alcohol. The future is in the hospital and dying.
They want ten more dollars to buy alcohol.
They want an hour added to their curfew so that they can attend a party.
They want only ten more minutes to finish a level and save their game.
They want only one night without their parents to do foolish things.
They want approve as they do pot.
They want only hundred dollars more to buy more pot.
They want forgiveness when things turn bad.
They want support through the good and bad.
The future is in the hands of the youth. So where are all the kids going? Not to soccer practice, not to study groups, not to class, but to party and live on the edge.
In 2006 one out of every three will not graduate. More than 30% of ninthgraders will choose not to finish high school. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0621/p03s02-ussc.html)
Classes that I have use to be full and desks were hard to find because there were so many kids in my class. We even had to share books but now rows of desk have become emtpy and we now have a book to take home along with a book to keep at school. Twenty of my fellow classmates dropped out during thier junior or freshmen year.
Their reason was that they were sick of homework, teachers, school taking up five days a week, and taking so many of their years. Where can I find my fellow classmates? Some are in jail now, some are selling drugs to earn money to pay off other people. Some are no longer recognizable as their faces are caved in, their bones are showing. Some have scars and marks all over their face that no longer shows their youth but rather years beyond imagined. Some have children, most of them have two kids and the father is not in the picture and if asked who the father might be they could not give you a good guess. Others have ran away without telling their parents or their friends and have never shown back home.
Where is the future it is in the youth. The youth who have seen more bad than a child should every see, who thought going out into the world would lead to happiness. The future is in the kid who sits in advance math all by himself questioning whether he should go join his other classmates or he should try to make something of himself.
The more the youth act out the more the future is lost. Every day we throw away more and more of what our parents and grandparents have worked so hard to create.
I watch kids who I just went to prom with be in the newspaper under the police reports. Their mug shot looks nothing like a child but resembles a criminal.
Some kids promise to go back to school when they live out their dreams or when they feel like learning again. Others make a promise that they will learn from internet schools and work towards college but it is lies as I see their fimiliar face handing me my sandwich through a fast food window.
Is this what the future will be. Grown men sitting on their basement couch drinking and playing video games. Generation after generation having children younger and younger every year. Schools having to shut down because they do not have enough students attending to stay opened.
The kid who sits alone in math class has decided that he is going to drop out of school to and join his classmates at a party later. His reason is that he wants to amount to something, perhaps save the world or find a cure for cancer but he knows that you need more than one person. He cannot change the world by himself, he can make small impacts but he needs help to conduct research and cures. He needs the ability to have someone he can work with and is intelligent.
When he is about to leave he walks past the gym and sees that more kids are taking gym classes and weight lifting classes more than anything. When he looks up at the wall he notices that some kids schedules are just seven periods a day of gym, advance gym, weights, advance weights, and study hall.
A teacher walks by and aks the kid, " Why are you not in class learning about global warming or how to stop diseases to save the future?"
The kid looks at the teacher and responses, "The future is in gym glass pumping iron, on the streets, behind the drive in windown at Arby's, at a clinic giving birth to another child, in a casket. The future is no longer in this school."
