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GHETTOHEAT® HOTNESS: BLUE


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Guest HICKSON

GHETTOHEAT® HOTNESS: BLUE

WAKE UP, EVERYBODY…

When I began brainstorming for what I consider, will be the perfect novel to reach the desired audience (everybody), I didn’t know that TATTOOED TEARS would come pouring out of my state-issued pen, and onto state-issued writing paper. I didn’t know if I would have the motivation and drive needed to put it together. Now that it’s done, I can honestly say that, I didn’t know I had the stomach to do something like this.

The reason: being that our youth, children, younger generation, or whatever else you choose to call our leaders of tomorrow, mean so much to me. So much in fact, I didn’t want to do them an injustice by not telling it like it is, for our kids.

Our children go through so much at such a young age, I myself sometimes wonder, how it is that some are capable of making a future for themselves; a future without gangs, a future without violence, a future without hate and ignorance, a future that doesn’t involve dealing directly with the hypocrisies, of this system of so-called justice we live under in America.

Despite what our news broadcasts, newspapers, politicians, jails and institutional statistics may lead you to believe, along with our juvenile detention centers, we as a society must realize that not all of our youth are going to crumble under the pressure.

TATTOOED TEARS, however, is about those who suffer through more trials and tribulations than your average convict on Death Row. And they’re not even old enough to drive, yet they find the strength and willpower in themselves, to overcome those obstacles and trying times that are laid before them, in order to succeed in their own little worlds.

My father used to tell me, “Boy, listen to me and listen good. I done already been down the road you on…” I’m sure that 90% of our up-and-coming generation has heard this at least once in their lives. But did my father really understand what I was going through?

Had he really gone down the same roads that I’ve been on? I mean, my father didn’t go to school with me, didn’t get locked up with me, nor did he didn’t drink alcohol with me, or smoke or sell marijuana with me. My father also didn’t get into the fights I got into, or get shot at with me. Do you understand the point I’m trying to get across to you?

Now, we as adults can do what we can, to detour our children from doing the things we did, or from getting into certain types of situations we got into, but the fact remains that, they will make their own decisions, with or without our guidance. In a way it’s scary—frightening even, but what can we do?

All we can do is hope and pray that they make the best choices possible with the hands they’re dealt. All the advice in the world—given to any random child, means nothing if the child it’s directed to, doesn’t grasp the true meaning of what he or she has been told. And if that kid does understand the concept of what’s been taught to them, it now becomes a new weight on their shoulders; a new “pressure” to deal with—a new rebuttal to what they were probably originally thinking, contemplating or anticipating.

We want our youth to be responsible, and become right-minded enough to act on the positive voices in their heads, opposed to the negative ones. With peer pressure coming in all forms from sex, drugs, gangs, and guns, battling the anxiety of getting good grades, going to college, carrying a team to the state championship, and holding a job all at the same time, a kid can really become a victim in his or her own world, which can result in becoming, his or her own worst enemy.

That, in itself, is what I feel is the biggest problem facing our children today, and has been in years past. It’s the stress they feel, the depression they suffer, and the grueling temptations they need to avoid, yet seem to fall prey to it every time.

I guess what I am trying to ask in writing TATTOOED TEARS is…why? Why must they go through it? If we as adults claim to have been down that road of suffering, and of every problem in the book that these kids can endure for the benefit of them, so they wouldn’t have to undergo it themselves, why does it still happen? Why are more kids carrying guns? Why are more children having sex? Why are more-and-more kids joining gangs, or even associating or affiliating themselves with these groups?

WHY? WHY? WHY?

If these same children are our future—truly ‘our’ future—why aren’t their lives being molded today, for the betterment of that future?

There are a million answers to these questions, along with some potentially powerful debates that can be brought forth for a much needed discussion on this topic. However, to make sure our youth are going to be the productive citizens in society, we should be hoping them to be, we have to do more than just talk about it. We, as the leaders of today, must take the initiative to do something about it.

NOW!!!

Granted, there are issues that are a part of a young person’s life that we cannot understand because the fact remains: this is a new generation coming up—a new breed. That means new problems, new barriers to get around, new hindrances, that are affecting their everyday living.

With that said, maybe we—the role models, heroes and saviors in our children’s lives, should just fathom that, we can’t save the world. We can’t do it all! We can’t be there for our kids twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because it’s just not physically possible. We can’t be at school in class with them, and we can’t be at their jobs.

We just can’t do it all!

Yes, as I said before, it’s scary. But they are our children—our future—so what can we do? We can love them, share with our youth, and listen to our kids. We can occupy their lives with an unconditional amount of appreciation, showing we value their existence, showing that they’re wanted, and needed.

In TATTOOED TEARS, Amir struggles with his own issues and demons—the types of things that most kids experience at one time or another in their young lives. But will Amir make it pass the temptations, struggles, and everyday battles that all kids encounter as part of just doing the one thing nature asks of him, growing up?

As a writer, I am desperately asking you, the reader, to pay attention to this story carefully. Even though it’s a complete work of fiction, I need you to understand that these things really do happen to our children on an everyday basis. Not to all kids, but to our youth in general. The problem is that, they constantly feel as if they’re alone in the process, and that no one is expecting them to succeed in the first place.

What is also disturbing to me is that, a lot of children are labeled as having certain disorders, after they’ve made a ‘cry for help’. Labels that many, in my opinion—and I stress my opinion, are wrong in various cases—‘misdiagnosed’ for lack of a better term.

Ritalin is not always the answer!

I know from having more than eighteen years of experience, living with a kid that was ‘diagnosed’ with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), and admitted to classes designed to meet the ‘special needs’ of the Behavior-Emotionally Handicapped (BEH).

He took Ritalin for many of those years. I’m not in any way trying to talk down the prescription drug, as it has worked for some, yet Ritalin just didn’t always prove to very effective in our household.

Once again, I say that all of our children are in danger of failing in life, or taking the wrong path. I say that all of our children are potentially at risk of doing so, because ‘growing up’, simply isn’t the same as it once was.

We can, however, help our youth get through it, be there for them, do what we can for the kids, without robbing them of a childhood.

This is TATTOOED TEARS…

Shed some if you’d like.

BLUE is author of the upcoming book, TATTOOED TEARS, an alarming novel that serves as a call-to-action to save our troubled, high-risk youth within Ghetto-America. Blue is here to make a difference. To contact BLUE, e-mail him at BLUE@GHETTOHEAT.COM

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