I pick up my students often to take them out with me to church and other events that they wouldn't normally get to attend. Lately the topic of conversation in my car has been about who got shot and the chicks on the corner. I make my pick up on Royden Street in Camden and as we drive past the alley, I watch the police lay out the red cones with numbers on them for the shell casings they found. The area is corded off with yellow tape and it's literally just a few feet away from the front door I stopped at. I drive to the corner and look to my left to see a large truck with flashing lights labeled police. Across from that vehicle there is a smaller truck also labeled police. Then there are several police cars randomly placed and even a few cops on bikes, which isn't the norm for that area. I turn to my right and the corner across the street is lined with candles burning. Across from that, still many faces hanging in front of the corner store that my students tell me they are no longer allowed to walk to. They tell me there is a war going on in Camden and kids are being shot and stabbed and they aren't much older than them. One child tells me how the boys that would normally be on the corner are now being killed off. Too bad they decided a life on the corner is better than the straight and narrow. I drive a bit further down the block and see a parent of a former student of mine. I ask her where he was. She tells me that because it's so bad out there she has him staying at someone else's house. I nod my head in agreement but I'm questioning why she is sitting outside on the stoop chillin', while her kids are staying elsewhere for safety reasons. Doesn't she value her life?
We turn the corner on Broadway and drive down the block witnessing the street walkers in their creative yet scantily clad outfits. The kids laugh for some reason because they think these women standing on the corner selling their bodies or looking like zombies because of the drugs they are on is funny. So I ask them why they are laughing. One child says that she thinks it's funny they are standing there waiting to be picked up. I tell her that I don't find it to be funny at all. I think it's quite sad. She said she thought it was messed up but yet still funny. I explain to her that I doubt that any of these women said that when they grew up they wanted to go stand on a corner and get picked up. I told her that when she looks around her neighborhood, she should want better for herself. She should want better for the people she sees. I told her to make sure I don't ever see her standing out there on anyone's corner. She said that would never be her. I explained to her that I'm sure at least one of the women out there once said the same thing. It would never be them, or they would never do something like that. What she needs to remember is to never place herself in a position to ever have to be out there, or never be hooked on a drug or dependent on someone or something who would place her out there like that.
Every day I spend with these kids, it gets harder for me not to want to help them escape these streets, these times, and these jacked up situations that they are thrusted into. Dr. Phil says, "Perception is reality!" So if these kids perceive their current situations as the way that the world is supposed to be, I fear they will not break the cycle. I want to drill it into their heads that just because they are surrounded by disfunction, it doesn't mean they have to allow it to consume them. Funny thing is that out of all the girls who have been around me, I think I am only getting through to one. Honestly, I have to take that as a positive rather than a negative. One is better than none.
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