That turned dark quickly. Instead of being a story of triumph over adversity, the film turned into a dreadful and depressing account of unremitting grief and anarchy. After weeks of violence and chaos, the movie is as hopeless as most young kids in such a situation, though the real danger is probably closer to what the author did in his essay: "The first lesson to be learned is not to wait for lightning to strike. It does occasionally." The original article in the Boston Globe: ROBERT WEBB'S "REDEMPTION": "The problem is I never got to be a boy," he writes in his compelling, poignant and brutally honest essay "My Prison Without Bars," which appeared in the current issue of People. "It all began with that word, that one simple word. I could have been ... ." He could have been what? Not what but who. Not that kid from "Stand by Me." Not that kid in his room watching TV every night. Not the kid who would climb the light pole by the lake or find his father at the bottom of the stairs at three in the morning, ready to play. Not the kid who didn't kill the old man. Not the guy with the girl beside him at the movie theater or the guy at the party who might not show the world what he really looks like. Not the guy he's been for a very long time. Not the guy who gets close, who opens his heart and finds she's just like everyone else, just like you and me. "If this sounds like boy-talk to you, don't worry," Webb writes. "You won't be hearing much more. I'll stick with girl-talk. I can do that." For three hours Saturday night at the Vortex, he made a boy of me. He made me listen to stories and cry and laugh and hope and cry again. He made me believe that maybe things do happen for a reason and that love does win. Even when it looks like it doesn't, even when you want it to just go away, it never really does. And that's how Webb does it. It seems so simple. You just turn your heart on. Just reach out and open it. And you reach out and open it again. And again. And then, like the kid with the new bike or the kid with the old parents or the kid with the crazy best friend, you just ride off into the night on one great big ride. You don't know me. You probably won't even want to. But I just have to thank the guy who wrote about the girl he lost. And I hope that everyone who reads him finally figures out the reason why he wrote it and what it meant to him and who he really is. And I hope that somehow the reason why turned out to be nothing at all like he thought. The reason why, after all, is for every one of us to know for ourselves. I know. How do you start when there's so much to say, so many words to be used and so little time to use them? With the story of what was done. With the words of what is left. And, if they want to be, with the first breath in the second. That's how you start. Because that's all any of us have ever had. And we still have each other. And that's what we have to take with us when we run. And if we run hard enough, we can get away from our past, our fears, our failures, our past mistakes, our disappointments. And when that happens, things will be right again. Our hearts will fill with hope and color and purpose. Things will be easy again. But mostly they will be right again. Hope and life, and maybe, just maybe, the reason why. Jimmy ===== Jimmy Carter Archives Online. Available at: http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org. Copyright 1999 The Carter Library. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx Got something to say? Visit our Guestbook http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/forum/guestbook.asp or email us at jimmy@jimmycarterlibrary.org _________________________________________________________________ Need a hobby? Visit Yahoo! Personals for more online fun. http://personals.yahoo.com/