twenty-one: heartbreaker

It's not every day you have the chance to meet someone who will just break your heart. Today I spent my morning on a bus collecting kids for a day program and handing out sandwiches. The bus took me to parts of town I didn't even recognize and it seemed like an entirely different city. I have never seen kids so eager to be touched and listened to.

There was one little girl who was really clingy and throughout the course of the morning she managed to tell me her life story. She is 7 going on 8, and is currently giving up sweet foods not because she's on a diet or she doesn't like them but because they make her teeth hurt. One look at the amount of missing teeth and fillings and that statement makes perfect sense. She likes going to beach, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and tickling her little sister. She seemed so oblivious to the obvious hardships of her life, besides the fact that she said she hated her dad because he was mean.

At first I was a bit turned off by the dirty clothes, the smell, and the wild hair. But since she climbed right up on my lap there wasn't much I could do... except to listen and to make conversation with her. It was actually pretty easy, and really she was just like any other kid whose world is a their oyster. This really surprised me because she was at the age where one generally becomes aware of the surrounding circumstances and hers do not seem to be in her favour. Growing up in public housing, parents' who allow their kids to go to a program where a) no criminal record check was done on myself (and probably the other volunteers as well), b) there was no training provided,and relying on others to feed her, are probably not what most people experience at that age.

I wonder what her future has in store, because it's going to be a tough one where the path of least resistance would be to repeating the footsteps of her parents. It breaks my heart that the statistics are against her and I wonder if she'll turn out ok. I hope she does.