Letters To The Jail

When I was a young boy, around the age of 14, I had many responsibilities. One of them was to babysit my three little first cousins. They are good kids, so it was easy to do. I love my family, and my cousins more than I might say at times. I fondly remember watching them grow up to be the outstanding young men they have become! I remember there smiling faces, and there spoiled cries. I remember the games we played as kids, and I remember just connecting with my cousins, and trying so hard to be a good role model. Now my cousins are grown up men with kids. The middle child of three boys, I used to baby sit, is now going to prison. Where did we go wrong as a family? Why is he living up to the statics that people have placed on us? I know how tough it must be to grow up, and deal with your peers. As I said before, I remember getting jumped as a kid on the way home from school. I remember people trying to get me to sell drugs. I remember me wanting to fit in, but being so different, and not stooping down to peer presure. All of us, as family, well most of us, have overcome that, and become amazing pillars of the community. To see one of them fail, is so hard for me to take! He went to college for a year, and is so spoiled and can have whatever he wants! Anything he wanted, his life to be, he could have become. Now, he is in prison for three to six years, which is a terrible dark place. You do the crime, I guess you have to do the time! I just wish he would have went down a different avenue of life. As he goes down to the jail, leaving his 3 month old baby, alone, without a father, for who knows how long. I send a prayer, to GOD, that he finds a trade, and comes out learning from his mistakes. I don't want to lecture my little cousin, I'm here to, hopefully give him hope, to do the right thing. I'm sure he knows what he has done is wrong! I just will never understand why, he would do that to himself? Now I write letters to jail!