Opie

There’s a college student in the cut next to me who goes by the name “Opie”. He’s a goofy 23 year old white kid who raps nonstop. “Word, Prison Larry. Yo Yo!”



Its Christmas night and we’re talking. I like the kid. I can’t help it, but as obnoxious and off the chain as he is, he’s my older son’s age.


Here’s the thing. He showed me his paperwork. He’s been locked up since 1997. Let me write that again: 1997. He was born in 1987 and at the age of 10 was sent to “juvi” for the first of multiple trips.


“I’d been in trouble since I was eight but never sent to juvi until I was 10. I got drunk, stole five cars from a 7-11. Then, I broke in another store and stole the register.”


Ten years old and drunk and stealing cars. Why, I wondered, would a ten year old kid steal a car?


He was in and out of juvenile hall the next eight years. In fact, since he turned 10, he’s been out “on the street” less than eighteen months.


Juvenile hall is a hole. A few months ago a Department of Justice study listed a number of Virginia Juvenile Detention Centers as significant areas of sex abuse and violence. Some of the centers listed were Bon Air and Beaumont. Opie said “I spent time at both”.


He committed an armed robbery at 18 and went to Sussex, a DOC level 4 prison. “I knew how to sell weed when I went in. Four years later, I knew how to sell coke.”


Six months after being released in 2009, he had a dirty urine. His probation officer “violated” him and the court gave him five years.


He’s enrolled in college, pulls B’s and C’s. He got serious with me for a minute. “I hate this shit. I don’t want my life to be like this.”


No child should have lived like Opie. There was a song when I was young by Ray Stevens – “Everything is Beautiful”. It started with the Sunday school verse: “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world.”


Somebody needs to give a damn about Opie.