Just a story from America

Her name is Brenda. She and a young man named Matt were the late crew at a Flash Food gas station that I stopped into in Viola, Arkansas. She was cleaning up as the place was preparing to shut down for the night about an hour later. She was interested in my story, asking intelligent questions and giving intelligent answers to my own queries. Then I asked her how old she was.
She told me she was nineteen. I jokingly asked if she was married and had a family, expecting that she was still at home with mom and dad, working her way through college. She sighed and told me this story:
She is going through a divorce. Her husband just doesn t want to work, preferring to sit at home and drink beer and watch TV. When I asked her if she had any kids she affirmed that she did. Three of them, ages 3, 2 and 1, but that she was through having kids for a while. I asked her what her dreams were, jobwise, and she told me she wanted to get into CNA work. I asked her about college and she told me she had dropped out of school, so college wasnt an option. She had moved with her folks from Missouri to Arkansas, and she avowed that it was a little better in Arkansas but not much. I told her that she really ought to get her GED and give school another try , in my opinion, but she seemed to be resigned to the life she already is stuck in.
It’s a story that Ive heard before, not just here in the south but everywhere Ive been…young people with good brains and bad situations who see a hole so deep that they think they are stuck in it forever. I know that some get it together and make something of themselves, but too often people like Brenda just accept a second hand life and drift towards their old age unsatisfied and with unfulfilled dreams. Please don’t be one of them.