Tom Frye

I have come to the conclusion that the majority of kids that I work with have anger issues. It doesn’t take much to piss them off. Most of the time, they are looking for a reason to vent when life doesn’t go their way. It all stems from just how off-centered most of them are. In dealing with these angry kids, I figure these kids were born angry. They will go through the rest of their lives plagued by a rage that simmers just beneath the surface.

My one foster son, Matt, had an allergic reaction to the word, NO. Anytime he didn’t get his way and I had to tell him, No, he would literally blow up, slamming his fists into walls, the fridge, and occasionally my face.

I think it stemmed from loss of control that impacted him at an early age. Due to circumstances out of his control, his dad and mom had a violent altercation, which led to their divorce and Matt being placed in foster care. Shortly after coming to live with me, 11-year-old Matt had me drive him down to the small town where his family had once lived. It was like something out of a bad movie as the neighbor lady took one angry look at Matt walking up her sidewalk to greet her, a big grin on his face. She glared at him and snapped, “We don’t want your kind in our town!”

I think the town folk were still pissed off at his family. Matt’s three older his brothers had all been arrested for demolishing tombstones at the graveyard in the small town, and his family had been asked to leave. Which explained the lady’s reaction to seeing him.

Which also explained a lot about Matt’s outrageous behavior, coming from dysfunction junction. His rages were dynamic, too. There he was a 12-year-old scrawny little kid, and yet he could give me a real run for my money. I had taken five years of training from a martial artist while working at the Attention Center, and so I knew just enough moves to protect myself against feet, fists, and head-butts. But teeth? They didn’t cover that in those restraint training classes. And man, to get bit by a raging inferno who gnawed on me like a rabid rat, hurt like hell!

Experts call it “centergy” instead of energy, when explaining why small, wiry kids can literally throw a grown man halfway across a room. Centergy is a massive force that is inspired by no-thought-to-consequences, that makes little people have the strength of Superman. Matt could work himself up so much that I had a most difficult time restraining him to keep him from hurting me or himself.

Once when Matt had failed to launch his skateboard off of the launch ramp on our front sidewalk, I had to pick him up and carry him into the house, and as I stepped inside, he flew into a rage and spun around and sank his teeth into my chest. Once I had him sprawled on the floor on his back, Matt proceeded to buck me off like a bucking bronco, and then he freed his one wrist from my grasp and sank his teeth into his own forearm. He pulled at least three inches of flesh into his mouth as he tried to rip a hunk of flesh out of his arm.

Amazed and appalled, I managed to pin him again. This time he slithered his way beneath me and bit me in my inner thigh, six inches short of my crotch. And once I pried his teeth off of my thigh, I planted my legs on both of his shoulders, and pinned his arms above his head.

Then, Matt hawked up a gob of mucus and spit it into my face. So with his green snot hanging off of my face, I continued my struggle to bring Matt back to reality. Because where he went in that rage-filled episode, only he knew. But somewhere in that red-hot inferno, a light finally came on, and Matt twisted one wrist out of my sweaty grasp . . . his hand shot up toward my face . . . I turned my head to the side . . . and Matt planted his hand on the side of my forehead . . . and gently wiped away the spit. He then ended the entire episode by going limp on the floor.

I later had my cop friend send an officer out to take a picture of my six-inch in circumference bruise, which she used later for shock value, showing it to the female officers who knew me from my storytelling days at police camp. Later, those same officers would see me at the next camp session, and grab their left breast and say, “Ohhh!” And then laugh uproariously. I am just glad I didn’t allow that officer to snap off a picture of the bruise on my inner thigh.

Another time, while a Nebraska blizzard raged outside, Matt was serving up another one of his storms inside.  I ended up taking him down in the kitchen, where I spent the better part of an hour tussling with the Tasmanian Devil, as he tried to punch, kick, bite me, and hang snotty spit in my face.

At the end of round one, I was so thirsty that my eyes came to rest on the bowl of dog water next to the fridge. I scooted him over closer to the fridge, and he saw my intentions and snarled, “Do it! I dare you! But if you dump that on me, you’re dead!”

“Oh,” I said, snatching up the bowl, “I wouldn’t waste it on you.”

I then took a long drink from the bowl, grinning when I finished, and making a panting sound as I sat the bowl back down. Matt looked up at me in disbelief and laughed, “You are crazy, you know that? You are one crazy son of a bitch!”

I released him then, and stood up thinking the fight was over. But Matt ran to his room, threw on his winter coat, and started for the front door. What followed was an intervention straight from the looney bin. It turned into a maddening marathon as I chased Matt from the living room, through the kitchen, into the den, into my bedroom, and ended up back in the living room. Over and over, sometimes switching reverse courses, but with him always three steps ahead of me.

At one point, Matt had himself so worked up he started flapping his arms and hooting like Daffy Duck, letting loose with a “Wahoo! Wahoo! Wahoo-hoo-a-hoooo-ahoooo!” He was dead on, too. By the time he had let out a dozen of these classic Daffy Duck imitations, I was laughing so hard I couldn’t keep chasing him. So I tried a different tactic. I ran into the bathroom and cranked on the cold water.

The collision happened somewhere between the front door and the bookcase near the bathroom.  I managed to latch onto the folds of his winter parka, pulling the hood over his snarling face to protect me from gnashing teeth, and I drug him into the bathroom. There, I shoved a struggling, squirming Matt beneath the cold threads of water from the shower, then released him and said, “Now, go ahead and run away.”

I then walked calmly back into the den to comfort the poor dogs who had been terrorized by Matt’s obnoxious, ludicrous, but humor-filled outburst. I then turned on the TV and proceeded to watch a movie. Ten minutes later, after changing from street clothes into his sweats, Matt came trudging into the den, where he plopped himself down between two dogs, and said, “What are we watching?”

The topper of his rage-filled outbursts came one night after Anger Management classes. Matt came home after managing to get an elevator stuck between floors at Child Guidance by his monkeying around, and when I asked the simple question later, “Did you take your meds tonight?” Matt stormed off to the kitchen, flung open the cupboard door, and swallowed the entire bottle of Ritalin.

I calmly said, “Put your shoes back on, and let’s go.”

Matt snarled, “Go? Go where?”

“To the ER at the hospital,” I said. “To get your stomach pumped. Either that, or you’re probably going to die.”

I regret to this day that I didn’t stay that night at the ER as I might have had more luck than those poor nurses in calming him down, but the next morning, I picked Matt up, traces of charcoal still coating his nostrils and the sides of his mouth. He trudged out to my truck, shaking his head, muttering, “Fucking nurses!”

The head nurse told me that after an hour of struggling with the little wildcat, three nurses and two orderlies managed to get him strapped down, forced his mouth open, poured in the liquid, and waited five minutes for the projectile vomiting to begin. It did, and Matt was saved.

So where did such rage come from? And why did he unleash his fury on me constantly? What made him think he could come into my home, which I graciously opened up for him for 2 entire years, and throw his fits of anger on a weekly basis?

His therapist claimed he blew up and threw such shit fits at my house, because he felt safe with me. That he knew that no matter what he did, I wouldn’t hurt him. That I would tolerate his behavior, and never raise a hand in anger to pummel him senseless (like he deserved). The therapist claimed he had lost so much control in his earlier life that he was now lashing back out and trying to gain control of anything that he could as a survival technique.

Did I understand this talk? No, but I tried each time to help him gain control over his red-hot blazing emotions, and although he injured me constantly, damaged my walls with his thrown skateboards, once kicked my dog, and squared off with me at least once a week, I kept him.

I could have at any time, picked up the phone, called his caseworker and said, “Screw this! Come and take the raging little lunatic out of here! This is no longer a mercy mission! This is a suicide mission, because eventually he is going to go one step too far! And either he or I are going to get seriously hurt!”

But I didn’t. I kept him. I dealt with his anger using all the techniques and training I had learned through the years, and I stayed stubbornly committed to helping him find his way out of a such a storm.

It was in the middle of one of his raging fits, that it finally dawned me why I remained determined to help him. It was the only year in Nebraska history, where because of a blizzard, the city cancelled Halloween. One week later, snow still heavy on the ground, I took Matt and his friend, Steve, to the south side of town so they could trick-or-treat among the rich folks.

I sat in the nice, warm toasty van, while the boys trudged through knee-deep snow as they went from house-to-house. Matt was dressed in a medieval cloak and carrying a long bow as he was supposed to be Robin Hood. Seated there in the comforts of the van, I poured myself a cup of hot tea from my thermos, and I had just removed my boots and placed my stocking feet up on the dash to warm them, when Steve and Matt  passed through a crowd of kids and parent-escorts.

I saw Matt hand his trick-or-treat bag off to Steve and attempt to remove the longbow from his person. He started to pull it over his head, when the string got stuck on the hood of his cloak. The wooden frame snapped back and stuck Matt directly in the nose.

Matt let loose with a string of foul words and proceeded to lash out at a nearby tree with the doomed longbow. With parents and children frozen in the street and looking on in wide-eyed horror, Matt snapped the bow in two, continually spewing forth red-hot words of pure rage.

A voice inside my head said, “Aren’t you going to do something? He’s gonna give those parents a coronary and put those kids in severe shock. You just gonna sit here while he carries on?”

It was like a rare Kodak moment, when all reality comes into crystal-clear clarity and for some odd reason despite all things contrary, life comes into focus, and for brief seconds everything makes perfect sense. It reminded me of Steve Martin in the movie Parenthood, when he is watching the school play and his son is running amok on stage. Steve is seated there, riding an emotional roller coaster of memories as they wash over him.

It was just like that. I just sat there, warming my feet, calmly sipping my tea, and thinking, “One day, I am gonna actually miss this. Because I am only going to pass this way once in this life, and one day I will look back at this moment in time, and remember it fondly.”

Matt, without my help or guidance, heaved the broken bow at all those kids and parents, stormed over to the van, and climbed inside. “Let’s go home,” he snapped. And so we did.

That summer, in mid-July, I had another one of those moments, Matt included.

As it was, every night before going to bed, Matt would light candles in the den, gather up my writings for the day, and beg me to read to him. “It’s my dream,” he would say. “My dream to have a bedtime story read to me, just like you do.”

True to form, Matt created more moments of drama that night. He had gathered over a hundred lightning bugs in a large sun-tea jar, and as I started to read my story of dragons and knights, Matt released all those shimmering fireflies from the jar. They winked in and out as they drifted through the den, creating the perfect atmosphere for our story-reading session.

Later, after Matt fell asleep, a dog on either side of him, I looked around the den to the slowly fading fireflies and thought, “Yes, definitely another magic moment frozen in time.”

The next morning, I lied to Matt, telling him I had shooed all those tiny fairy fliers out the back door after he’d fallen asleep, when in reality, I had hoovered their dead little bodies up in the vacuum sweeper. Because Matt would have cried had I told him they had all died after putting on such a dynamic light show for us.

So for all his bluster, his outrageous outbursts, his gnawing teeth, his striking fists, Matt had a heart. And a BIG heart, too. And sometimes in rare moments, I got to see the good side of Matt, the part that was controlled by the “good” side of his “big” heart.

I think all kids have heart, although sometimes it is buried so deep it takes a lot of time and patience to change a bad heart into a good heart, and sometimes there is nothing you can do to change a kid who is hell-bent for self-destruction. But somehow, in some way, I managed to reach this one kid, and it made the difference in both of our lives.

Now that Matt is grown and moved on, he rides with a biker gang/motorcycle club, and last year the members of his club donated proceeds of one their runs to my friends in the Chrome Divas, who were raising money for at-risk kids. So, a circle within a circle.

I know my title was originally written with a woman’s fury in mind, and maybe I should have finished it with, “Hell hath no fury . . . like a kid who has been hurt early on in this life.”

And perhaps those of you, youth workers, teachers, and parents, who still have to deal with such young, raging tempests, can remember it all started with a deep hurt. Maybe that will help you to go the distance in trying to mend that hurt. Or at least help you to make a difference in some rage-filled kid’s life.

As for me, those days are long past. And no more furies from hell for me, thank you.

One morning, I rushed into juvenile court 10 minutes late for the hearing of one my kids. I slipped quietly into the courtroom, and was surprised when Judge Nuernberger looked up in the middle of the proceedings and said, “I am pleased to see Tom Frye in court this morning. Would you please join us at the table?”

Curious as to why the Judge had summoned me to the table, I looked to 14-year-old, Anthony, a troubled Havelock boy who had obviously been crying his eyes out. Just before I arrived, the Judge had sentenced him to the Youth Development Center in Kearney. However, the Judge had an alternative in mind. He looked at me and smiled as I sat down at the council table.

You see, Judge Nuernberger and I had a history.

As a kid, I had once been in his court myself for running away from home, and he sentenced me to the detention home and six months probation.

As an adult, the Judge’s recommendation letter allowed me to work at the Attention Center as a Juvenile Care Specialist, even though I was 19 and needed to be 20 at the time.

And once after my presentation at a foster care banquet, the Judge asked me for a tape of my music as he was attending a judge’s convention and Johnny Cash was the keynote speaker. I still have the photo of Judge Nuernberger handing Johnny my tape. It hangs on my wall to this day.

There, that day in court, the Judge said, “Mr. Frye, if I allow a 30 day suspended sentence for Anthony here, would you continue to work with him?”

I failed to look in the direction of my supervisor from the Department of Social Services, who earlier had informed me that our time helping Anthony was up. Six months with Anthony as his family support worker and under no circumstances was I to continue. At least not on the dime of DSS.

Ignoring her furious glare, I smiled at Judge Nuernberger and said, “Yes.”

Judge Nuerberger returned my smile and suspended Anthony’s sentence.

I had never seen that done before. Later, I asked Anthony’s PO, Marti Barnhouse, what prompted the Judge to take this route. Marti told me the minute he had sentenced Anthony, the kid broke down and started crying, “Please give me one more chance. Let me work with Tom Frye. He makes me feel so good about myself. Please give me one more chance!”

After receiving a verbal ass-kicking from my DSS supervisor, I set out to keep Anthony out of Kearney. Three nights after the court hearing, Anthony broke into his neighbor’s garage to steal tools. He was caught and ended up back in court. Judge Nuernberger sadly shook his head and lifted the suspension. Anthony ended up going to Kearney.

Second chances meant nothing to this kid.

A year later, while working at the Attention Center, 13-year-old, Rocky informed me that Mike was plotting to lure me to his cell and use a razor blade in an escape attempt. He would have done a considerable amount of damage, too. At 17, he was 6 feet tall and all muscle. As it turned out, Dennis Banks and I confronted Mike, who turned it on himself and stood us off for two hours until giving up the blade.

Two days later, Rocky and his brother attacked our director in another escape attempt. Both boys were sent to Kearney. Remembering that Rocky had told me of the razor blade, I felt obligated to do the kid a favor. So I wrote Judge Nuernberger a letter, asking him to suspend his sentence, and allow him to come back to Lincoln to live with foster parents, Joyce and Ron, who had agreed to accept Rocky in their home.

Judge Nuernberger did another thing I had never seen done before. He ordered Rocky transported back to Lincoln. However, just before court, Joyce and Ron backed out. They didn’t think they could handle Rocky, and so there we sat in juvenile court. Rocky with no placement. The Judge with no home to send him to. And me feeling like a fool for even attempting to help the kid.

Judge Nuernberger looked up at me seated in the back of the courtroom, and asked me to join him at the table. Once again, I did so, and he asked me if I would be willing to become a foster parent to Rocky. I was only 20 at the time, so age was an issue as I needed to be 21, but Judge Nuernberger told me he would issue a letter to the foster care review board to ask them to make an exception in my case. They did so, and Rocky came to live with me for the next 2 years.

And while we had many ups and downs, he turned out to be a decent kid. He had no law violations, went to school regularly, and didn’t use drugs or alcohol. However, 2 months after leaving my home, Rocky assaulted his neighbor lady during a home invasion and ended up being sent to Kearney.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

 A year after Rocky left my home, Chad came to live with me. After running away from 47 different placements, Chad came to me at the end-of-the-line. One more run, and the Judge would send him to Kearney. Chad often joked about this arrangement as I lived on Kearney Avenue in Havelock, and he often said, “Kearney, the one place I have been trying to avoid all my life, and here I end up living on Kearney Avenue! Go figure!”

The first week of Chad’s stay, he broke into my gun cabinet, loaded my .22 rifle, and put it to his head, threatening to kill himself. Chad stood there for 45 minutes, with me trying to talk the gun away from him. He said, “You’re just like every other asshole the State sent me to live with, and when you get tired of me you’ll just get rid of me, just like all the other assholes did!”

I failed to mention that he had actually ran away from most of those other “assholes,” and that he had never given them the chance to get rid of him. But I didn’t. I simply talked him down, all the while he stood there with a cocked rifle held under his chin, his finger on the trigger.

At the end of that ordeal, Chad finally lowered the gun and allowed me to unload it. He ended up staying with me for 3 years after that, and while at times, he considered me the biggest asshole he’d ever met in all of his 47 different placements, he opted to stick it out with me until the Judge determined he needed to be reunited with his family.

Two months after he turned 17, Chad broke into a tavern in a small town. He got busted and ended up in small town court. The Judge there was lenient and was in the middle of sentencing him to three months of jail time, with work release at Chad’s dad’s during week days. An easy sentence, right? Well, right in the middle of the Judge’s sentencing, Chad shouted, “F you!”

He then ran out of the courtroom, and ended up with a felony charge that automatically carried one year in the State Pen. Chad ended up there. Twice so far in this lifetime.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

Another kid I worked with, Bryce, and his three friends skipped school one day. They stole a car and went for a wild joy ride. They ended up flipping the car off of the I-80 overpass out on 27^th Street. Two of Bryce’s friends were crushed and killed. Bryce, however, lived and ended up in juvenile court half a dozen times after that, until he was sent to Kearney, because he just never realized how lucky he was.

Second chances meant nothing to that kid.

I first met Phil when he was 7. Two days before that meeting, Phil, temporarily blinded by his shaggy black hair forced down into his eyes by the baseball cap he was wearing, had a bad crash on his bike. He had broken his left arm and he wore a cast. To add insult to injury, Phil was searching all over Havelock for his lost dog, Barney. We found his dog out at the pound, and Phil and Barney were reunited. Phil became my shadow after that.

At 9, Phil smoked his first joint. At 11, he started dropping acid and taking speed. At 14, he found himself in trouble at juvenile court. At 16, he was confined to the Attention Center. While there, he and another boy I had been working with, Dearle Alexander, had a clash one night over who knew me better. Dearle, at 14, had recently murdered an old man over on Lake Street, and since being confined, he had read several of my manuscripts and became my friend. Dearle called Phil a liar for saying that I was his uncle, and the fight was on.

After their slug-fest, Dearle ended up in solitary confinement. And Phil ended up being restrained and placed in his room, where he  climbed up onto his desk and starte hissing like a scalded cat. I got a call from fellow staff who asked me to come in before they were forced to send Phil to the Regional Center. I could hear Phil in the background, meowing at the top of his lungs.

The moment I walked into his room, Phil climbed down off his desk and sheepishly said, “Hello, Tom. What are you doing here?”

I said, “Trying to keep you from being sent to the Regional Center, Phil.”

“The nuthouse?” Phil said, incredulously. “Why? They only send loons to the looney bin! And I ain’t no loon!”

And this coming from a kid who had just freaked out the staff by turning into a rabid cat?

It turned out to be a long night, as I first settled Phil down, and then ended up talking to Dearle to settle him down. Before stepping out of Dearle’s cell, he bid me good-night, saying, “See you later, Uncle Tom.”

Which was how the fight started in the first place.

A week later, Phil was sentenced to Kearney, and I had to be the staff member at AC who sent him on his way in leg shackles and handcuffs. It was a sad day.

One year later, Phil ended up putting a shotgun to his chest, and doing a stand-off with his girl friend. She managed to pull it away from him several times, but Phil put the gun to his chest one more, and this time, it went off. I will never forget Phil or the impact his tragic death had on my life.

I often wonder what would have become of Phil if he had taken advantage of all the second chances he’d had, or how life might have turned out for him. I often wonder about all the others who were given second chances, and foolishly blew them off.

Like Kamikaze pilots, these kids have managed to send themselves careening out of control, until at last they crashed. Even though I was willing to reach out and help them, they were hell-bent and determined to throw it all away on their self-absorbed suicide missions.

Why? What drives them? What motivates them to destroy themselves and to be so foolishly ignorant or so stubbornly stupid?

Anyone who can answer that, please do so, because I have been searching for an answer to that question for over 35 years.

Perhaps, I will never know.

One day, while serving as a foster parent to two challenging kids, I came to a crossroads. I needed to end my services to one of the kids, as they did not play nice together. So I went to their teacher to ask her opinion in regards to which one should go and which one should stay.

She had taught behaviorally challenged kids all of her life and I thought she might put the whole thing in perspective for me. However, she told me something so terrible that I couldn’t believe she’d said it. “Stick with Matt,” she said, “for he is salvageable. The best thing that could happen to John is he walk out into a street and get hit by a speeding car. Because he is going to be institutionalized for the rest of his life.”

I walked away from that meeting, shaking my head and muttering, “That was harsh.” The next morning, I called John’s caseworker and told her about the incident that happened days before which resulted in me making my decision in regards to Matt and John.

We had been driving my Mazda King Cab truck down a side street. Matt was in front with me, John and my biker friend, Tom, were seated in the back of the cab. My two dogs, Sam and Bummer, were riding in the open-ended bed of the small truck.

John got mad at Matt for some reason and demanded to sit in the bed with the dogs. All I said was, “No, because you have to have a seat belt on.”

And John went absolutely ape!

He reached around the seat, grabbed me by my hair, kicked me in the face, and bit my hand before I put him in a restraint hold. Still trying to bite me, he began frothing at the mouth. My big, brave biker friend simply sat there, watching the scene in total fascination. When I finally shouted, “Grab his arms!” Tom grabbed onto John’s arms.

However, John kicked me one last time in the face. My feet came off the clutch and brake and we proceeded to shoot out onto busy Randolph Street. Quick-thinking Matt reached over and turned the truck off, and fortunately we screeched to a halt before shooting out into heavy traffic.

To top it off, some lady pulled up behind our stalled truck and began honking her horn so that she could get through the intersection. As if on cue, John began shouting, “Help, lady! Call the police! I am being kidnaped!”

Matt gasped, “Oh my God, John! Shut your mouth! What if she does call the cops?”

John shouted back, “Help! I am being kidnaped! Just call the police, lady! Call the police!”

It ended with the lady driving out around us and John being held by Tom all the way home. Three hours later, with still no cops showing up at my house, we breathed a sigh of relief figuring we were in the clear. John had stormed off to his room, slammed the door, and went right to sleep, drained from his ordeal.

At the end of the night, Matt came trudging into my room, carrying his sleeping bag and a baseball bat. “I’m sleeping in here on the floor with the dogs,” Matt said. “Because I am not sleeping in there with that nut-case! I also hid all the steak knives in the kitchen so he doesn’t knife us in our sleep!”

So as I shared with John’s caseworker the tragic story, she agreed with me that removing John from my home would be the best thing to do under the circumstances. She even stepped up to the plate to take the blame so John would not blame me. She and I both remembered what John had said when he’d first moved in. He had looked at me with his big brown eyes and sweetly said, “I really love you for taking me into your home but . . . if you ever get rid of me, I will take a knife to you and RIP YOUR HEART OUT!”

This last part he said in a demonic, harsh, guttural whisper that sent chills up and down my spine. And I firmly believed him, remembering he had also threatened to burn my house down, too. So it was a relief to have this caseworker, a rare breed at HHS, take full responsibility for removing John from my home.

Two months later, John having been placed with another foster family, showed up at my door, shirtless, out of breath, and bloody from a dozen or more scratches all over his chest. I asked him what was wrong, and John said, “Been jogging! Fell in a rose bush!”

I invited him in, and gave him a glass of pop and a shirt to slip on. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was John’s frantic foster mom telling me John had wigged out while she and her husband had been driving. The exact same MO! Only this time, some concerned citizen saw John kick the back window out of their blazer, saw the husband trying to restrain John, and promptly called the police!

The cop was there at their house, threatening to give the husband an assault ticket, and so I put John on the phone to talk to the gruff cop. By the time the whole affair was over, the cop drove over to pick John up, take him back home, straighten out the situation, and he left there not giving anyone a ticket. But shaking his head, I am sure.

Two years later, John robbed a small town bank and sped away with state troopers shooting at his car with shotguns. They eventually arrested him. While in jail awaiting trial, John called me and asked me to go speak with his brother. He was furious with him as he did not follow through with his orders. John said, “I am so pissed at him, because he won’t drive out and shoot the bank president! He was the only eye-witness to my robbery! If only he was dead, they couldn’t convict me!”

I simply said, “John, do you realize these jail phone calls are recorded?”

Click! is all I heard and then dead silence on the line.

Later in court, the judge sentenced him to 10 years on the robbery charge, and John blurted, “10 years? Hell, I can do 10 years standing on my head!”

To which the judge replied, “Fine, I will add an additional 5 years, so 15 years in all, and maybe by then you will be back on your feet!”

I kid you not, those were his exact words.

Which brings me back to what John’s teacher said about him walking out in the street to get hit by a speeding car. So while her words were harsh and terrible, she had been absolutely dead-on about where he would end up at for the rest of his tragic life.

And Matt? Matt grew up to be a biker, who rides with a motorcycle club. But he’s never had any law violations and has never done any time. In fact, the biker gang he rides with recently donated some of their profits from one of their rallies to help delinquent kids.

About a year ago, I came home late one night and before stepping into my house, I heard a voice from the yard next door: “Hey, Tom? Come over here and have a beer! Bring your guitar and sing us some songs!”

I was amazed. There sat Matt with my biker chick neighbor. He was dressed from head to toe in black leathers, a beer raised in his hand, and grinning fiercely.

I took my guitar over and played them songs late into the night.

Later, my biker chick neighbor shared with me something Matt had told her: “Living with Tom was a blessing in disguise. If it wasn’t for him I would have gotten myself into a whole helluva lot of trouble.”

So, in the long run, I made the right decision back in the day, getting rid of one so that I had a better chance at helping the other.

I guess I made the right decision after all.