Today I met a boy, a 17yr old, who may have very well changed the route I thought my life was to take. And while my head was all wrapped up in my own business venture and I had spent a good chunk of my day bouncing ideas around about it, so sure that that's what I wanted to do, it all got challenged when I met this boy.
He's a street kid -- a street kid who has been living on the street for the last year and whom is trying to lay low until he reaches his 18th birthday.
He was as high as a kite when I met him on the subway. Head bobbing, struggling to keep his eyes open and his head afloat. "You look super tired ", I joked to him. "You okay?" He said some kind of modern day lingo, some slang I had no idea on what it meant, so I just smiled and said "okay". "You don't smoke, do you?!" He said and he was right. Never done a drug in my life. He then explained what he had said -- he had smoked too much weed today. I asked if he was a student and just like that a conversation was sparked.
The boxing club at which I train at on Dufferin Street is a private club but in the late afternoon it opens up as a nonprofit boxing club for kids under the age of 18 -- MJKO.
This boy is 17 and said he was interested in boxing so I recommended he go there. The owner of MJKO is a friend of mine so I suggested he go talk to her. She's used to dealing with situations like his, situations that you would never expect a kid to go through like immigration problems and bad homes. Anyways, I took out one of my business cards and wrote down MJKO's info on it -- location and hours. I hope he goes there.
I got off at my station, had to meet with Foo Man Choo, but after I left I thought perhaps I should have stayed with him. I could see Foo Man Choo any day but I might not see this kid anymore. I had asked him where he was going and he noted he was going to the airport. He told me how it's the safest place for him to sleep and it made perfect sense. No one would think anything of you if you were to wash your face or even your hair in the bathroom sink. I've washed my hair in a sink there once -- hey the flight from Korea is brutally long. Anyways, he told me that he's resorted to living out of the airport because of all the bs that goes down at government funded group homes and such places that are labelled as "help" but really aren't.
When I parted Foo Man Choo, a couple of hours later, I returned to the subway station and debated whether or not I should go to the airport to search him out.
I didn't go.
I regret it.
Now to do something about it...
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