Thoughts on some boys I thought I knew, once.

A few years ago the husband and I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to a news story on the radio about two local boys being arrested for armed robbery. We didn't quite catch the names, though, or at least we couldn't really believe what we heard. So we laid in bed for another hour (yes, this was very much pre-children) until the local news was replayed.

We'd heard correctly. It was them. Two boys from our church, from the Sunday School class I was teaching in fact. One of them used to babysit the teen every so often.

It was the most amazing shock. These were the two last boys I would have thought would pull something like this. Oh, they'd gotten a little off the rails in the last year and we were all concerned for them, but there was nothing to indicate they were capable of armed robbery.

The one boy (let's call him Pete,) the teen's sitter when the teen was a grade-schooler, had always had such a sweetness to him. He'd gotten kind of angry lately, and taken to doing weird things with his hair and clothing, and his friends were a source of concern to his grandmother who was raising him, but, well, what's so unusual about that when you're dealing with a teenager?

The other boy (call him Sam) was smart and personable, talented and capable, a good-looking boy who was perhaps a little too aware of hus advantages in life and maybe a tad arrogant about it sometimes. But really a good kid otherwise, a nice boy. He'd been caught experimenting with marijuana, but that was the only time he'd gotten in trouble. He was a tad rebellious, but no more than you'd expect at that age. The marijuana had his mother pretty upset (understandably,) but it's a far cry fronm that to threatening to kill someone if they don't hand over their money to you.

They both went to jail. We've written to them as we could, which hasn't been easy because they both got shuffled around the system, getting moved from jail to jail as population pressures demanded. It's been hard to keep up with where they were.

Sam finished his sentence last month and is currently living with his mother and trying to get a life going again. Pete got a longer sentence and still has a couple of years to go.

I was talking with Sam's mother the other day and learned some things I didn't know at the time. It turns out she was very unsympathetic to him after he was home on bail before his trial. He started crying about how he'd messed up his life so badly, and she reacted with, "Well you should have thought about that before, shouldn't you?" Then she read him the riot act and talked him into admitting his wrong and accepting whatever punishment he was given.

I found that very interesting in light of how he turned out. He's really changed and grown up. He's very humble now and regretful of his actions back then. He's already started working toward a career as a plumber and was praised by the halfway program he was put in for how well he is doing in adjusting to real life.

Pete, on the other hand, isn't doing well at all. He's continuing to make bad decisions about his life, getting in trouble in jail and heading further down this self-destructive path.

When the boys were arrested, Pete fought from the first, insisting that it wasn't his fault, that he was led astray by Sam, and that he shouldn't have gotten in trouble. His grandmother was very angry with Sam and Sam's mother, to the point that she stopped coming to church and now refuses to have anything to do with any of us, even friends, because she feels we should have kept Sam and his mom out of our church. When Sam got a lighter sentence because of pleading guilty she was even angrier.

Now, there's a lot there in both boy's backgrounds. Sam and his mom were abandoned by Sam's father the year before all this happened, which wasn't all bad as his dad was abusive to them. Pete was raised by his grandmother from birth because neither of his parents could be bothered with him.

But, I couldn't help being struck by the obvious. The boy who 'fessed up and whose mother didn't allow self-pity is the one who's moving on to a good future. The boy whose grandmother encouraged self-pity and who still doesn't acknowledge his fault is the one who's falling deeper into a very unhappy life.

Not the whole story, but I would bet it's an important part of it. Something to remember in raising my kids. Sympathy is good; enabling is bad. Find the line and stay on the right side of it.