I Know Where I Don't Want To Go In Life, Because I've Been There

Late-night local news in the Nashville market resembles a real-life ongoing daily Jerry Springer episode.

The ex-boyfriend who decides to 'air out' the ex-girlfriend's 'crib', and ends up shooting a child instead.

The thug who stages a home invasion and murders a twelve-year-old child who (understandably) is frightened and wants to run away.

The weird story of a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl (with her about 30-year-old mother) who is complaining of being stalked by her present-boyfriend's-ex-girlfriend in the halls of the junior high school. The segment producer dutifully assists us by providing her name, and placing the caption 'victim' under her name.  (And this is worth burning video-tape, editing suite time and airtime because?...)

A running shoot-out/car chase across county lines that kills two, including a 17-year old high school senior.  Who knows what that one's about. Lunacy. It's not like the fictional cop shows, kids: If someone gets shot, he dies a horrible death, and it takes years to clean up the tragic mess left behind.

Then one last one. OS expects more of the same, and blessedly, he is wrong.

The story of a girl graduating from high school with honors, headed to university on scholarship with the goal to be a pathologist, who lives in temporary hotel housing with her mom, because they are homeless. And even flooded out of that housing in the Great Middle Tennessee Flood, just in time for final exams to begin.  Faculty at the school stepped in, friends pitched in.

She made it to prom.

She's graduating seventh in her class.

Her quote:  I know where I don't want to go in life, 'cause I've been there.



Back to life.

Much to do, dealing with families of over-indulged children who wonder why their poor kids should have to work in order to achieve anything.

OS is weary, and increasingly lacks the emotional energy to attempt to explain it one more time.