Product of Our Society
“Please help me,” was the cry of the eight-year-old boy, Dylan, to the 911 operator at the other end of the line.
What else could he say? For the second time this month, both his parents were drunk and beating him, this time just for spilling a glass of water. Like the time before, and many times before that, when the police arrived, his parents had already left. The police saw it as a child left home alone, who tripped down the stairs, hurt himself, got scared, and called 911. The incident was given little attention, then disregarded. Not only was it a large city, which gave the police “more important” things to worry about, the neighborhood was in a good part of town. His parents were wealthy, so naturally they could do nothing wrong.
After being refused help so many times, the boy quickly gave up on getting help from the outside world. He felt he would have to rely on himself.
The abuse continued on, and Dylan felt hurt deeply in many indescribable ways. He wanted to get back at the world, not at his parents. To Dylan, it seemed as though he were a lone knight fighting against a mighty dragon. Any allies he might have once had had all betrayed him. It was the world that had betrayed him.
“Sure,” Dylan thought, “My parents were the ones actually beating me, but nobody ever tried to help me.”
His rage continued to grow, and he wanted others to feel the pain he had
experienced. That’s when he found it: his parents’ handgun, fully loaded; ready to kill.
Without full knowledge of what he was about to do, Dylan slid the gun into his backpack and left for school.
Twenty minutes into the school day, Dylan took out the gun, not caring what would happen to him. He shot, and shot again, until the school was a mess of blood and confusion. Then, he stepped outside, sat down, and set the gun by his side. It didn’t hurt him to see his classmates dying – it actually made him feel good to see someone else hurt.
“I could do it again,” Dylan thought as the police detained him. He didn’t resist the police, and he was no longer the scared, young boy he had been; he was lost in a world of his own. As he was driven off in the police car, he looked at the school. It wasn’t chaotic anymore; it was silent, with the bloody stains, the stillness, and the stench of death setting in upon it. Still, Dylan felt no remorse, for the pain that he had once felt was passed. He was not the one hurting anymore.
Later, as the judge looked over the twelve-year-olds file, one thought persisted in his mind. Shaking his head, the honorable judge said to himself, “This is what we have created; this is a product of our society.
“What is your name, young man?”
“Dylan, as if you didn’t already know,” the ten-year-old muttered.
The police chief had asked this question out of formality only, for it was not the first time he had seen the boy, and he was sure it would not be the last. The police chief knew the boy’s case and had taken a kind of pity on him. Usually, the chief could get Dylan’s charges dropped without the boy knowing he did so, but this time he was being charged with armed robbery, which made it harder to do so without the boy’s knowledge (Dylan had always thought that the charges were dropped because he was so young). This is when the chief decided to tell Dylan what he had been doing.
After he explained it, five minutes passed, and Dylan had still not replied. The silence was awkward, and the police chief became nervous, though he really didn’t think he had a reason to be. After all, the boy was only ten.
Finally, Dylan gave a response, breaking the silence. “What made you want to help me? What’s in it for you?”
There was another silence, and the police chief didn’t know if he was supposed to answer that question; he wasn’t even sure there was an answer. That was an awfully tough question coming from such a young child.
That’s when it hit him. This was a ten-year-old boy living on the streets, with no parents; no one to love him. So, soon the police chief adopted Dylan, and raised him as his son.
Dylan now had time to focus on his future, and not what crime he would have to commit to eat the next day. This goal made Dylan want to work hard and do his best all the time.
At high school graduation, when he received the recognition of being a salutatorian, something stuck in the minds of those who knew his past. Dozens of them thought to themselves, “This is what a product of our society can be.”
- Ava
