McGuyver

Some of the kids I enjoyed most were the ones with ingenious minds, good or bad as they were. They were intellectual masterminds -- high logical IQs, though perhaps low emotional IQs. Even though they were deprived in many ways, their intellect still found a way to express itself in spite of all the soul had been through.

One of these unbreakable spirits was Stewart. He loved his Legos and paper and whatever raw material he had to work with. He could build anything out of nothing. Like a Buddhist mind. He even had a buzzed head, almost bald -- the Buddhahead buzz cut common among white kids at the time.

I had a natural affinity to Stewart, whom we affectionately called "McGuyver." I loved to spend time with this kid. Building whatever. A Lego city of various colors. A set or origami creatures from paper -- I don't even know what now. I just recall that he could build things out of anything. He was a clever kid, sharp as a tack. But with just a snowball's chance in hell of a normal life that could channel his talents in any meaningful way.

I fell in love with that kid. Yearned for him to have a productive life that offered him happiness and enabled him to express his talents.

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A couple of years after Stewart discharged I was able to visit him. He was living in one of our facilities in another city about 60 miles away. I went there with a case worker who was visiting another kid for some unrelated reason.

I found Stewart, hanging out at his cabin of sorts and playing with an R/C car. He remembered me, but as I reached out to hug him, his response was cold. As if he had been through this before -- the adult once in his life who was no more, the shoulder to lean on that withdrew its perch, the advocate just like all others who got lost in the shuffle, not really there for Stewart when it mattered most, but just a cog in the system that felt some pity but not enough to snatch him up and take him home. Why should he bother to hug me back? Why should he care? Essentially, no one else really cared about him.

And then I understood a great deal. A great deal. A goodly little bit about how meaningless even my empathy and sympathy and pity was to these tortured souls who'd endured so much. Unless I could do something to change their lives, what good was my presence in their lives? I crossed their paths -- so, what difference did I truly make?

I left Stewart with a heart broken in my chest. I have agonized about him to this day, as I have agonized about many of our kids. I wonder if he has done okay. I would love to know.

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© 2007 David Lee Cummings