UNFORGIVING SOCIETY

Do you know any troubled youth? Well, I was a troubled youth. I had to go through hard times to get to where I am now, because the society that we live in today is so unforgiving. Sometimes it gets to the point to where you have to make a decision; are you going to let them break you or overcome your mistake? Hard times like incarceration, loss of jobs, and people judging me without even knowing me, has shown me how to deal with an unforgiving society.

Due to my foolish teenage ways I was incarcerated for twelve years of my life. When I was fifteen me and a couple of my friends decided one night that we were going to rob something, because we needed some money and we were on a mission to get it. My friend said we should rob a person, but my thought was how much money would a person on the streets have in their pocket? Probley not much; so I said “let’s rob a store”. My friends looked at me like I was crazy because they weren’t really about that lifestyle. They wanted to talk about all the wrong things we could do to get money, but didn’t want to do any of them. So it took a little convincing but they were like let’s get this money. So we ended up on the side of this store at 10:30 at night and we were each trying to convince the other to go in first. Nobody wanted to be the first guy in, so I took control, “and said I’ll go in first, everybody put your mask on,” and they did. I saw two people had walked in the store since we got there, and that made me a little more nervous, but it was like now or never. So I ran into the store gun drawn and demanded money from the store clerk, and told the other two people just to stay still and they would be good, Just then my partners came into the store, so I sent one behind the counter for the money. And told the other, “Watch my back”. It took all of two minutes to do this and once I seen the money change hands, I said lets go; We took off running across the street and I told them to follow me to an abandoned house where we would split the money. We decided to go our separate ways and we would be in contact in a few days. I called a taxicab and made it home safely. These fools decided to stay together and that would be a costly mistake. They ended up getting cornered by the K-9 police and getting apprehended that very same night. The way I found out that they had been caught, I got a phone call from one of their girlfriends, A few hours later telling me that they was locked up and they wanted me to get them a lawyer. My response was I would handle it in the morning, so first thing in the morning I went and retained them an attorney and he was on the case. The case went on for 6 months, I got a job was still going to school, one day the police showed up at my house saying that I had been named the third suspect in the robbery by my two best friends. That’s where my life took a drastic turn.

As a result of being incarcerated for 12 years 9 months from the time I was 15 until I was 28 I wasn’t able to build any work history. I was able to get my high school diploma, vocational trades, such as electrician, building repair, small engine repair, just to name a few; Even with all those trades it’s still hard to maintain employment with my criminal record. I’ve had jobs that pay 35 dollar’s an hour and lost them because of my background. I have even had jobs like factory jobs, that normally involve hard labor fire me after finding out about my record. Every time I go into a job interview I’m faced with the decision, do I tell them about my felony now or do I lie, and make money while I can because I have a newborn son to feed.

What burns me up about society in my opinion, is people judge you before they even know you. When I go into interviews I want to tell people that I did make a mistake when I was 15 but that’s not who I am anymore, I have paid my debt and learned my lesson, I just want to work and make an honest living for my family, don’t judge me off of my past, judge me on how I display myself around you, or off my credentials until I show you otherwise. Give me a chance to prove that I can or can’t do the job. Don’t bring me in already having lost the job.

An unforgiving society that incarcerated a kid (me) continues to make it hard for me to keep jobs, and continues to judge me without even knowing my story. I understand that I made my own decision and I have to live with that. But should society keep beating me over the head about what I did? Why is our society so unforgiving? Should people that make mistakes have to deal with not being able to hold a job that has nothing to do with their crime? I am a part of this society, and I understand that we all are sometimes judgmental, but at what point do we take a look at ourselves in the mirror and say if I had got caught doing what I used to do should I have been giving a second chance?