Overheard

While substituting last week, I overheard a conversation between two girls before (and during) one of my classes. One girl, a short redhead, was saying she'd just found out she was pregnant. The other girl, a slightly taller brunette with blonde streaks, was asking her what she was going to do. She said she was going to keep the baby, but she didn't really like the father very much, so she'd probably just leave the baby with her parents while she finished school. Or maybe she'd give it up for adoption. She hadn't decided yet.

A few minutes later the same two girls started talking about their experiences in DT (juvenile detention). The brunette said she'd been in DT for two nights because she ran away from home. She'd been living with her grandmother, but her grandmother had started to 'act crazy', so she left. She was away for something like three months before she was found. She spent two nights in DT before being returned home.

The redhead then talked about her experiences in DT. She'd been detained several times, and been sent to a couple of different facilities, for assault. Against her parents. She was also saying that all of her sisters had been sent to DT for the same thing.

The brunette was saying that her two nights of detention had scared her. As freaky as her home situation might be, she never wanted to go back to detention. The redhead didn't like DT much either, but she wasn't nearly as upset by it. She was used to it; it had become routine for her.

I sat and listened to these conversations mostly because I had no idea what to say. These sorts of things are way outside my experience. I didn't know how to relate. And yet I know that I'm going to have kids with similar situations when I get my own classroom. I wonder what I'll do. I hope I'll be better prepared then than I am now.

But mostly I hope that if I end up with daughters, they won't be having conversations like this when they're sixteen.