Learning the Hard Way

HE IS A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD American kid, living with his mom and sister in a nice upper middle class home in small town America. He goes to a great school, and has a great life, although he himself, like many Americans, has no idea what a great life he actually has. He is about five foot eight, two hundred and fifty pounds, and is built perfectly for football. He'd make a great offensive lineman, body-wise, but he could never play; he would cry, or throw a punch, the first time he made a block of tackle, or, as we say these days, got hit. He would much rather avoid exercise altogether, and sit on a couch, playing video games. I have known him two and a half years, and have never seen him in a good mood. He does not like to talk, and we rarely do. I know better than to try, and I know better than to try to teach him anything. Besides, you can't teach him anything, he already knows everything. In that regard, he is very much an American.(I work for a state agency which provides assistance to kids with disabilities) He is only very slightly below average in intelligence, his most dangerous disability of a personality trait being anger management. He has a record of violent behavior, and is currently on probation with the law. He can't wait to get home from school every day, so he can eat anything and everything in the house, and play violent video games, his current one being "Call of Duty". He plays for hours, wearing a headset, talking, evidently, to several of his classmates around town, as they play the game together. Its amazing. The computer generated images on the big HD flatscreen TV are incredible. I sit, mezmerized, staring at the screen, while he kills monsters and people by the boatload, with blood and all. While he plays, he nibbles consantly on fat and cholestoral. All this happens with the knowledge and apparent consent of his mother, whose only objective, apparently, is to please her baby. Meanwhile, his treatment of her is atrocious. If he asks for a new fifty dollar video game or article of clothing, and she doesn't immediately step and fetch it, he throws a tantrum. My concern is, what in the world will become of him when he turns eighteen, and becomes an adult? He's going to be big, unprepared for life, and very, very angry. His biggest disability, in all truth, is that he is an American, and as such, seems to believe that he owns the entire world, and should be treated accordingly. He'll learn otherwise, soon enough. You hope the learning doesn't take place in prison.