They Told Me I Had to Write This Read Online Free PDF Page B

mate I’ve got.
    Clem.
    THURSDAY, JUNE 4
MORE JACKO & OTHER STUFF
    Dear Gram
    Before you start thinking about Jacko like he’s a hooligan or something, I should tell you that in this school kids like him are pretty normal. We’ve all had a tough time in normal school and some kids can’t ever go back. I don’t think Jacko is one of those kids, but some of the kids here are really off the planet.
    There’s kids with ADHD and on Rit or Dexies like Jacko and Pete. I don’t have medication but Dad reckons I should be tested for ADHD, but I don’t think I’m really doing it like those kids who seem to run full-boost turbo most of the day.
    It’s a bit like when I was in year six with this group of boys and we’d eat a stack of Redskins at recess and then be really off for the next hour or two. We’d be doing all this crazy stuff and saying crazy things. It was pretty nangtastic at the time and we had this competition to see who could be the first to make the teacher yell at him between recess and lunchtime.
    Well ADHD kids are like that all the time, except they get it for free and we had to buy the Redskins.
    Sometimes in group we talk about this stuff and we learned about this super-heated ADHD thing called Conduct Disorder which is CD and those kids mess up their lives coz they can’t help it and sooner or later the coppers get them for something illegal. And if those kids can be kept safe from themselves then they can level out a bit and stay out of jail after all.
    One time somebody’s group camp finished up early because some kids set fire to Mr Sykes’ tent. Seems Bundy & Co. wanted to get Mr Sykes back for confiscating a placcy bag of dope so they saved up the fuel for the Trangia burner. That night they poured it over his tent and lit it up. Mr Sykes must have come fizzing out of there fit to burn them in hell.
    We were fired up in group about what to do to those guys, and Mr O’Neill asked us a question. ‘What does real justice look like? Do we chuck a teenager in jail for something like this, or can we do something different?’ It took us a bit of time but we mostly agreed that it’s better for somebody not to have been in jail coz that can really count against you.
    Drug stuff gets talked about around here, and the last time somebody got busted for dope he had to give a ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ talk at lunchtime one race day when we had a visiting team. But that’s another story and I’ve said enough.
    These guys could have burnt Mr Sykes up bad and they still did it. I was so mad. Some of the boys here can be dangerous, but most are just kids trying to keep the lid on a volcano. Emotional problems are easy to find around here and I think that is where I am.
    Another thing I have learned about is ODB which is Oppositional Defiant Behaviour which is when a boy just fights against everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s his dad or teacher or anybody, as soon as somebody asks him to do something he tells them to stick it. And ODB is what I feel like lots of the time and it is something that causes me grief.
    But emotional problems come in all shapes and sizes and most kids are running on things that have happened to them when they were little. And ADHD and CD and ODB and EP are piled up pretty high at RV.
    There’s a couple of kids whose mum or dad or both have died or they’ve been adopted or something and they don’t fit in anywhere. We’ve got one Koori kid who was adopted by a white family and they didn’t know how to look after him properly and he kept running away. There’s a Koori family who pick him up sometimes and I hope they are his relatives.
    I think I’m a bit like him and I can see how not having a mum comes up in the way I think. And sometimes I almost say stuff about that teacher in primary school but that stuff is private and I just can’t do it.
    That thing with the teacher in year five is another thing that kids here have got, like I told you about Jacko and the Little