Magic, Kids, and Detroit--long anecdote

[Joanne Collins]

Ebony, thank you.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

I recognised so much of some of the people I have known all my life in this
post, and it saddens me so much that there are things that sadly are not
only present in big cities, but in small towns that are sad and negative. I
live in a small town, but the usual fate of young people here is so similar
to the ones you speak of. I know too many girls who had babies when they
were girls. I've attended three eighteenth birthday parties for the
children of my friends in the last six months. I'm thirty-one.

I thank the teacher who gave me the gift of reading. It let me see there
were other choices, other ways of life. Otherwise I might be the one
planning the eighteenth birthday party of the child I had when I was twelve
or thirteen.

Joanne, who cried over the post too.