He was one of those kids that could entertain himself for hours. He loved it if a friend would join him as he built dirt roads for matchbox cars, but he was equally happy if he was alone inspecting insects through a magnifying glass. He never fought, was never aggressive and would shy away from the kids that were.
Music lived in that little 13 year-old body. Songs composed themselves in his head and sometimes he took the time to transfer one or two of them to his Dad's computer. His parents thought he was a musical prodigy. His teachers thought he was disrespectful and lacked motivation.
One day his parents chose to take a risk. They had heard of a music director in another school who molded musicians out of little boys who didn't fit in. They dutifully climbed the paper mountain required to have their child enrolled in the school and were rewarded by a child who blossomed! They watched the self esteem joyfully explode from this little boy who had always been so different.
Science and English teachers sang and started planting their own dreams and visions into him. Kids like him,
liked him.
On a blistering hot day, the boy sat with his lunchtime friends passing the lunchtime boredom with a thumb tack. One friend discovered that if the thumbtack rubbed against the ground, it became very hot. The boy was intrigued. He stuck the tack into his shoe and scuffed his foot back and forth on the sidewalk. He touched his arm, "Ow!"
"Ow" for little boys translates into "Cool, let's do it again!" so he did.
Another boy said, "Do me! Do me!" So the boy heated the tack and touched his arm.
"Ow!"
A couple of hours later, that boy's mother was called to the school.
That boy's mother was me.
Picture a heavily pregnant woman towing two cranky toddlers into the middle school when they should have been napping.
Entering the
Principal's office where a uniformed officer stood next to my boy, I shot my son a "you-are-in-so-much-trouble" look.
I could not believe my son had done something so idiotic. I envisioned giving him the telling off of his life.
I didn't know that something that began as a bunch of kids experimenting with a tack would forever change my boy's life.
The nurse had called in the police. Not only was Son #1 was expelled from the school (they revoked his out-of-catchment waiver), but charges were also brought against him ( Aggravated Battery-- his weapon was a thumbtack) and we had to go to juvenile court.
Despite the juvenile judge admitting to us that she was appalled that this had ever made it to her court, she felt that it would be in bad form to just let it go and that it "might send out the wrong message if there wasn't a punishment".
Son #1 (and I, a parent had to attend as well) served 6 weeks in a First Offender's Class where among other things, he was taught safe sex and how to properly use a condom with anatomically correct models.
The crowning glory of the class was to enter a prison and see how the "other bad people" lived. My son and an 11 year-old child who had put a tack on a substitute teacher's chair were in a class with a kid who had knifed someone, kids who had been busted with drugs, a boy who had
vandalized a super store, some fighters and some computer thieves.
Our security as a family went completely
topsy turvy. Desperate to see the light in my
oldest's eyes again, I became obsessed with buying a house that would put us into that school's district. We lived in constant fear that the parents of the other child would see us as their golden egg. They had whispered to a mutual friend that they were considering
suing us.
We did manage to buy a home in that school's catchment, but things were never the same. The self esteem had been shattered. J1 convinced himself that he wasn't wanted there, so he stopped trying. The music director that had once lit up when speaking about the possibilities of J's musical abilities now had no patience with the sullen underachiever.
This was almost a decade ago. My son paid his price. Apparently he will continue to pay it. The Air Force Recruiter has informed him that a "Battery" charge on his record, regardless the circumstances or that he was a juvenile, will keep him out of the service.The kid can not get a break.
My husband once hit a kid in the head with a rock. I packed a girl's coat with snow (while she was wearing it-- for the life of me I can't think of why I thought it was so funny at the time) and that was only the beginning of stupid things we would do in our lives.
Has the world changed that much? Are kids going to be punished for every bad choice, every childish act?
Did you ever do something stupid in your childhood that today might cost you your future?
No, not the child responsible for most of my gray hair, I meant Pool time! 
