Rough Patches

If I speak plainly about what I do to earn my monthly paycheck, I will tell you that I work day in, day out, with folks who are on parole. They are all felons. I try to teach them remedial reading and math skills so they can move their lives forward.

They are the people with failed lives. Failed relationships, failed ambitions, failed life choices, failed vocations. Some have been incarcerated for as little as 18 months. Others have served more than 30 years for murder. The latter are the tenderized ones who have very little fight left in them. They want to simply live out their lives peaceably in some sort of decent housing; they can’t know where those resources will come from.