"Two paths diverged in a wood..."

Two weeks ago, I saw a clip on CBS Sunday Morning about two men with the same name but very different lives (see segment below). It made me think about the time I once saw a punked-out woman about my age at a UPS store, her hair blond with a pink stripe, tattoos, short shorts, and skulls and hearts on her fingerless elbow gloves, talking with the clerk about how she was joining the Peace Corps and heading to Africa where they were in desperate need of French speakers, which she just happened to be. I was jealous slightly that she could pick up and go. She walked out just before me and got into the same car I was driving. Different color, but otherwise the exact same car. Oh, and the "Rock Slut" sticker stuck to her back window. I felt like I had crossed paths with my alter ego. I used to love to go to concerts of the rowdy persuasion. Heck, I had even been in a band (though I would never claim to be the rock slut of the group). I had chosen to become a teacher and was at UPS sending back a globe when I had ordered a map of the world. She had chosen to become, well, a Peace Corps something-or-other and was going to see the world. Yet we had both chosen the same car. This is what I thought about as I heard the story of these two men who share the name Wes Moore - one a graduate of Johns Hopkins, the other serving a life sentence prison term for murder, who each happened to grow up in the same Baltimore neighborhood.

Later that evening, I was getting my things ready to bring to work the next day when I picked up the book True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman, which I had checked out from the school library weeks before but hadn't touched. I decided I would just bring it back, but as I got into bed, I cracked it open and began reading, to double check, I guess, if it would be yet another book I wouldn't get sucked in to. I couldn't put it down. It is Salzman's memoir about his experiences teaching a writing class to teenagers with life sentences for murder (mostly gang-related) in LA County's youth corrections system. I laughed and cried my way through and thought a lot about choices - the breaks we get and the ones we don't; how we handle the consequences of the choices we make; how, when and why we choose to get involved or stay out of things; the opportunities we have to make a difference that we take or pass up - and how I am grateful that I had parents who were around enough to teach me how to make good choices. How I had friends that didn't try to bring me down when I was at the vulnerable age where I could have been much more easily swayed. How I had teachers that pulled me aside when they noticed that I was acting different or my grades weren't what they usually were. Those things don't always make a difference, but often times they do, and not everyone has had the set and quantity of "guiders" that was dealt out to me. Regardless of the choices that we make though, we are all worth something - with as much worth as how much or how little time as it takes any of us to make a split-second choice and live with the consequences of it.

One quote in particular has stayed with me from that book, and somehow it connects to all of my ramblings. I have written it on the white-board in my classroom. I am delighted with how many students have asked me about it, though I have said nothing to draw attention to it:

Our world cannot be complete without you, and without hearing what you have to say. True justice cannot exist without compassion; compassion cannot exist without understanding. But no one will understand you unless you speak, and are able to speak clearly. (Sister Janet to all the students, page 155)

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