I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [9]
What I didn't know while I was wandering around the streets of Memphis, just north of downtown, was that I was right in the middle of one of the most important areas in black history, in Southern history, in American history. This was the area where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a number of speeches. This was the area where he was shot and where he was taken to the hospital. This was where he had died. But if anyone had tried to tell me that as a kid, I wouldn't have cared--not because I wouldn't think it was important but because I didn't know who Martin Luther King, Jr., was.
If it didn't happen while you were living in the neighborhood, it didn't happen. History didn't matter. The rest of the world didn't matter. All that mattered was here and now, making it to the next temporary job or the next government check. Making it to the next day.
I sometimes wonder if that isn't what made me so different from the people around me. As you'll learn, my sights were set on the future from the time I was seven, and then even more as I became a teenager. Instead of getting caught up in what was right in front of me, I always seemed to have my eyes on what was ahead. Some people, if they got a little money saved up, would go and spend it on a fancy purse or flashy jewelry or brand-name clothes. No one seemed worried about saving for a rainy day or starting a college fund. It was as if the future just didn't exist for them. But it did for me. I knew that I wanted a life outside of the'hood and I knew that the only way I could get it would be to go after it on my own.
Now, as I look back on what life in Hurt Village really was like, I realize how blessed I am to have gotten away. Sometimes people tell me that the odds of me making it out were pretty slim. They weren't slim--they were anorexic. Kids like me usually don't get to see their dreams come true. It's sad, but it's true. Happy endings just don't happen in the ghetto unless you're willing to make them yourself.
The odds are stacked against kids with rough home lives. In the inner city, fewer than half of us graduate high school. Of those who drop out, about three-fourths are chronically unemployed, and by their midthirties, 60 percent have spent time in prison. Things look just as bad for young women. Only about one-third of all teenage mothers graduate high school and 80 percent end up on welfare. Teenage pregnancies are highest in inner-city areas, but it's not just an urban problem.
In fact, anywhere you look, in any neighborhood or any school in America, there are kids who need help and hope. If you're an adult who wants to help a kid in foster care or a tough situation, the first step can be showing them that there is a different way of living from what they've always known. By helping a student focus on the future and sincerely believe that working toward their goals will pay off, you will be helping them take that first step in being something different and breaking away from the circumstances that have such a strong pull.
If you're one of those at-risk students and you want out, you have to work for it. Success isn't just handed to you; it's something you have to earn. No one can do it alone, so you have to keep an eye out for friends of good character and mentors who will give you guidance. But the way out starts with you and your determination to become something better than your circumstances. Just because your life begins in a bad place doesn't mean it has to end there.
The odds are stacked against you, but you can't let that be an excuse. You have too much promise to let the odds beat you. It can be done. I beat the odds, and so can you.
CHAPTER TWO
Life at Home
My first memory--the furthest back I can reach to recall a time in my life--is of walking down the side of the highway with my brothers when I was about two years old. We were looking for shelter because the house was locked up again. I don't remember any details beyond that. I don't know how far we had to