My dad worked with kids for forty years, teenage boys mostly, who’d been in trouble and were committed through the state to live somewhere else a while in hopes of getting themselves together. They’d grown up without parents, surrounded by poverty and violence. They’d sold drugs. They’d stolen cars and robbed people.
Some had done worse. Other boys hadn’t really done much at all, but they didn’t have a home. They needed somewhere to go.
I grew up listening to their stories. Then, for a long time, I forgot them.
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Diapers, Not Clothes
