I think it’s tough to be a good kid.

In a Facebook-statusing…Twitter updating…pubescent gossiping world it’s hard to keep some semblance of a moral center let alone a secure sense of self.
This, all while you’re trying to find what that “self” is exactly. I mean where’s the road map? There’s one to Timbuktu isn’t there? We make movies 3-D at a frame rate matching the real-time perception of the human eye, but we ca’t help young people navigate out of the dark and choppy waters of adolescence without letting them half drown first.
Adolescence…heck…what about 20s into 30? Where’s the help?

While we, the adult-types who pay taxes and vote (or are allowed to anyway,) can’t create an app for that, we can make sure youngsters can walk down the street without getting shot.

On January 11th, 13 year old Gabriel Clarke was walking to choir practice in Dorchester, MA and was shot in the stomach, literally, for no reason.
Police say he was just an innocent bystander…allowing us news-types to use the phrase, “caught in the crossfire” with accuracy. But more than a well-worn phrase, the incident is sparking what I and the people in his church community hope is a renewed awareness of the guns in their neighborhood.

For at least one news cycle families ask, dare I say demand, more be done to curb crime and, for the love of God, finally find an activity and a place to hold that activity where young people will actually go to to keep themselves out of trouble.
Dare I say, a place to draw that map out of adolescence?

I don’t live Dorchester, but this adult type is doing what she can to keep the discussion going. Are you?
Check out what Gabriel Clarke’s mom had to say to The Boston Herald. Decide if you’re mad enough.

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90017&sitesection=bostonherald&VID=24218921