What Happened by Jay Goodman

As I look at the young men in prison today, I have wondered how things have changed so much over the last thirty to forty years. While I am aware that times change, I look at the difference between my grandfather and my dad, their goal in life was pretty much the same, though they came from two different backgrounds, they both seemed to have a great understanding of the importance of life. Everything they had, they understood it was important, they never took it for granted. They both loved life and it showed in everything they did. Both men took pride in everything they did. I feel very blessed to have been raised by these men, they taught me a lot about life, and even though I ended up in prison, I look at life much different than most in here do. There is no doubt that I lost my way in life, that is why I am sitting in here, but those life lessons that were taught to me at such a young age, never left my mind or heart. Though I didn’t necessarily listen to their advice as a kid, as I grew into my 20’s, and especially my 30’s, I realized how important life is.

As I look around me in here, I have wondered how today’s young men seem to have not learned this important lesson. I believe in God with all my heart and give it my best to not be judgmental. After all, I just said that I didn’t necessarily listen to my grandfather and dad’s advice. We are not talking about young men or teenagers, the average age at this prison is thirty and up. They have had more than enough time to mature mentally, but amazingly their thinking and actions are still stuck on stupid. I have wondered how things have changed so much. I look around me and I wonder where these men will be in ten to twenty years from now, because it is not going to be good for them. I have listened to their conversations and it’s like listening to a bunch of kids who believes every day is a big party. I am pretty sure most teenagers looked at life like this at one point, but somewhere along the way the reality of life usually kicks in. I mean how can a man that is in his 30’s or 40’s, not have seen the light by now? By the time I was thirty, I had already traveled to every state in the United States except a few, plus multiple other countries around the world. I owned my own house, had been married to the same woman since I was a teenager, had five kids at that point, all in private school.

If everyone took a look at all the hippies back in the late 1960’s, who believed in sex, drugs and rock n roll, protested the war, the police and our government, a lot of what we see now days as well. But after college, they grew up, went on to become doctors, lawyers, professionals in every walk of life. Point being, they thought of life differently, they realized that life wasn’t just a big party. I remember an old cliché when I was young that I used to hear, “Men were men, and women were women.”, at what point did things change? If I was to guess, I would say around the big drug boom in the late 1960’s. A lot of people were starting to experiment with drugs, having sex with multiple people, many children born without a dad in their lives. By the 1970’s, the drug usage was so far out of control, that it started changing everything that America stood for.

In the 1960’s, drug use was pretty much just college kids, but by the 1970’s, kids as young as thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, were starting to get high. This led to young girls getting pregnant, babies having babies. By the end of the 1970’s, there were tens of thousands of children born from teenage girls that had been getting high on drugs their entire pregnancies, causing children’s development process to be slower than in the past. By the start of the 1980’s, crack cocaine showed up and swept across the United States like a deadly tornado. Women who became pregnant, kept right on smoking crack during pregnancy. I saw firsthand, during a visit to a children’s hospital the horrible damage crack was having on these newborn children. These children suffered from physical and mental issues, and by the end of the 1980’s, right on in to the 1990’s, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of these children born to crack moms. Plus, another big thing was starting to take place more.

Families in the past were strong, divorce from my grandfather’s, dad and mom’s days, was almost unheard of, less than ten percent. Even when I was born the divorce rate was low, but by the end of the 80’s and early 90’s, there were thousands of children being raised by one parent, a lot of which were getting high every day. So, since mom was drinking, smoking and using some type of drug or drugs, these kids had absolutely no type of discipline in their lives. Almost all of these children had some type of learning disability already, they needed more structure in their lives, but instead were being raised seeing their parents high every day, jumping from one relationship to another, many of which were based around drugs and drinking. These children grew up in most cases seeing their mothers abused, a lot had problems in school, had trouble sitting still and they didn’t learn as fast as the other children in class. Since they didn’t have any type of structure at home, of course these children would act out in school. When the teachers and school officials would try to discipline these kids, they would act out even more, sometimes violently, because that is what they have seen at home. When the school officials would try and reach out to the mom at home, instead of helping the situation, in most cases they would become angry with the school instead. So with no structure or discipline being given to these children, by the time they were twelve, thirteen, they themselves began to use drugs. They hate getting up every morning for school, mom has lost all control over them, they just stop going to school altogether. The schools really don’t care because they are sick of dealing with these kids, this was the new beginning of another trend in America, young boys and girls dropping out of school.

In my next chapter, I am going to explain what type of trap they continue to fall in to and what I believe is another big reason there is such a huge difference between the youth of today and the past.