I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [23]
Together, Carlos and I landed in a couple of homes that were less than ideal. I don't remember a whole lot about those places, and I don't really care to. I just know that I couldn't imagine how anyone could think that how we were being treated was an improvement over what life had been like before we were taken away. One of those places even happened to be located right down the same street from the house we lived on when the girls and John got picked up by the DCS people. It was odd to be living in a strange and unhappy house within sight of a place where my family had once lived and, in my mind at least, been very happy.
After Velma's, we never stayed at one foster home longer than a few months, and with each house change, there was usually a school change as well. By that point I was always so lost about where we were in the textbook that I just stopped caring. There was no reason to try because I'd just end up somewhere else pretty soon and have to do it all over again. I guess the teachers figured that I was so far behind that it wouldn't be worth their time to try to get me caught up because I'd just be bounced out of their classroom soon enough.
I kept trying to run whenever I could and figured--I don't know what. That just by showing up at my mother's door maybe one day we would all magically be back together again? That by escaping my present situation I could somehow just erase the past? That if I ran enough times maybe one day DCS would get tired of chasing me and let me stay put?
I don't think the reason mattered so much as the fact that when I ran home, I got to be with my real family and not the one the state had assigned me. Finally, I got my wish to not have to live with foster families anymore, but I had been labeled a troubled kid and I ended up in an even worse situation.
CHAPTER SIX
Escape from St. Joseph's
I've always been the quietest of my siblings, and I think that made me stand out to the social workers who were observing us. They misunderstood my shyness and the fact that I liked to observe more than participate. I've always been a person who studies things while I watch them; that's how I absorbed the rules and techniques of basketball and football--I concentrated on the games as I watched them on TV. That was how I was when I was with my family for our supervised visits, too. I guess most eight- or nine-year-old boys love to run and jump around, making as much noise as they can, but that just wasn't me.
During official, supervised visits, I tended to just watch my family talk back and forth and play together, because it felt more like being in a house. It was more like the old days, and it made me miss the times when we were all still living together.
Unfortunately, the DCS people who were supervising thought my quietness and the way I always stayed back a little bit was a sign of deeply repressed anger.
What followed was a lot of one-on-one meetings as they tried to get to the bottom of what they were afraid was pent-up rage. I didn't say much in those meetings, which seemed to only make things worse. I didn't laugh much, I didn't want to open up to them, and I didn't want to talk about my emotions. Ms. Spivey tried everything she could to get me to "give" as they call it--that is, to relate to her and let her inside my head so she could understand how I was coping with it all. For my part, I didn't understand why everyone kept pressuring me to talk. I thought it was pretty obvious what was bothering me, and I felt like they had the power to fix it but simply wouldn't.
When we talked recently, Ms. Spivey mentioned to me how her supervisor had a school photo of me from when I was at Gordon Elementary. The pictures