VINCE

Today we watched a movie in treatment called 7 pounds.  (The number is shown in that form in the title so I can’t be faulted for not spelling it out.).  It stars Will Smith.  And it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s really sad.  Funny in the right spots.  And at one point in the beginning he says to a man when asked why he was deserving of his help, “Because you’re a good person, even when you think nobody is looking.”

I liked that.  I want to be like that.

Throughout my life, I have always thought of myself as a good person.  Unfortunately, I haven’t actually acted like one very often.

From dealing drugs to stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down, to abandoning friends and family alike, I’ve done nearly everything possible to be a bad person.

I’ve looked into that a lot over the last two months, done a lot of soul searching, taken my moral inventory.  I can see the harm now in the things I’ve done.  Now I’m starting to build myself back up.  To gain the confidence I never had.  I can be that good person I’ve claimed to be.  I am going to be a good man.

—

Last night at 2100, like every other night, we stood at the POA at our bunks, waiting to be counted.  This time I noticed that it was still light out.  It reminded me of my childhood in Aspen Glen, the suburban subsidized housing complex we lived in until my mom met Kermit.  I remember staring out the window at the other kids still playing outside.  I don’t remember how old I was, or what time I had to go to sleep, but I do remember hours of boredom.

No boredom here.  Today we were allowed to raise our Reebok Step up to ten inches.  Ugh. What a difference.  For 40 minutes, they extra two inches made me sweat like a hog.  (That’s what she said?)  It was a good workout.

[ANNE: I feel myself getting defensive as I read Vince’s memory of Aspen Glen.  There must have been hundreds of kids who lived there.  We moved in when Vince was four.  Maybe he was staring out the window at the other kids because he was four and I actually enforced a bedtime, unlike a lot of the other parents.  There were good parents there, but there were terrible ones too.  And a lot of them, like me, were completely overwhelmed and exhausted with work, school, household chores, and parenting.  Sometimes I couldn’t stay awake past 9:00.  Unlike me, Vince is a night person, so I can imagine he was bored because he couldn’t go out and play and he couldn’t go to sleep.  But it’s not like I kept him locked in his room and slid trays of food under his door—just to be clear.]