Awhile back I watched a series called “Country Boys” on PBS. The series was about two young men who were dealing with life in Kentucky. One guy, “Chris” lived in what I would call utter poverty. His family lived in a single wide mobile. His dad was a lifelong alcoholic that ultimately died of liver disease. His mother was an uneducated woman who drifted from job to job. The jobs she took were at the bottom of the economic ladder. Motel maid, fast food cashier, etc. Chris’ father didn’t work and pretty much stayed in a drunken stupor 24 hours a day.  Chris has two siblings that didn’t make it in to the filming much.
Every day that I watched this show I found my mind thinking about how different each person’s circumstances are. This kid was born in to a life of poverty that statistically put him on a very similiar path as his parents. There were so many environmental barriers to him succeeding that I found myself feeling very sorry for him. As I got to know him more during the show, I had feelings of wanting to contribute to a fund to help pull him out of the situation. I wasn’t alone. It turns out that others felt the same way. So much so in fact that they set up a trust fund for Chris so that he could go to college.
Chris had ambitions in life but he never really got to consider many of the opportunities that I did. It’s always interesting to me to see how other people make decisions based on their situation. In the FAQ section of the Country Boys website, Chris talks about considering entering some local amateur wrestling competitions to try to win the prize money. Not exactly something that most of us would think to do, but probably not all that crazy of a thought where he lives.
While graduating from high school was a given for me, it wasn’t for many of the kids living in this area. Chris’ parents didn’t graduate from high school and that heavily influenced whether he would. His mother ultimately got a GED and so did Chris, but it was with heavy involvement by a network of people at the David school. There were many times that it didn’t look like he would make it out of high school.
I would highly encourage you to spend some time on the Country Boys site and watch some of the movies. The entire documentary is available online to watch and really is very interesting.