Recently went to an event filled with young people that were definitely outside my normal realm of acquaintance.

And in a word, it was FASCINATING!

Reminds me of what Dr. Phil said in one of his recent shows, about how once we’ve made up our minds we stop searching for new information, and we only acknowledge information and input that reinforces what we already believe.

He said we’re all guilty of this.

I know I am, and yet I think most of us don’t take enough measures to guard against it.

It seems incredibly conceited, if you think about it, to believe that what you ‘know’ of a situation or ‘fact’ is the bottom line on it.

Scientifically they hardly ever come to that conclusion. Even when theories have LOADS of evidence, it’s very very hard to actually conclusively prove things.

Well attending this event with all these young people, many of whom looked positively scary, was a real eye opener for me.

And yet I’ve been to schools where these type of gangster kids dominate.

I’ve had them in the audience.

I’ve had them whoop, whooping in my favour! Completely on board!

But here I was seeing them in a ‘social’ setting, and yes I felt a little scared as they walked behind me, and yes, I made sure my purse was within reach. It only made sense to do so.

And yet it was like I could sense what they were thinking and how they viewed life and I caught an inkling of the kind of messy  home life they’d grown up in that would make them determined to put on such an INTIMIDATING demeanor.

And wondering how many times they must have been let down in terms of being taught the life skills that could have helped them so that now they seemed incapable of seeing a way out.

And knowing that, “Hey, there’s a BUNCH of people who don’t think anything LIKE you!” And feeling completely jarred out of my sense of complacency.

It was humbling.

And educating.

And creatively stimulating because I started to wonder what they’d be thinking at this event, and even what they would see when they looked at me.

I can’t even blame them for losing interest in their schooling because white middle class curriculum just doesn’t resonate with boys from the hood!

And we need to be doing something to turn things around.

I remember hearing a lady say that she knew of kids like these who would only read books from one author: Walter Dean Myers, because they felt that he was the only one writing from where they were at.

And why am I thinking about all these different characters? Because I am wrestling with a story where the character is extremely different from any other character out there in young adult literature (or at least that’s what my agent said).

And I’m really feeling, hey that’s a good thing!

There are too many stories out there with the same stock characters! Smart alecky but wimpy hero, sexually empowered love interest, kind of like in How to Train Your Dragon, which was an interesting movie as long as he was engineering the rudder for the dragon and learning to fly but which quickly fell back into routine shortly after.

Oh the world is full of interesting fascinating characters! Time to get past the tried and true and take some risks, for goodness sakes!

And that means getting out of your comfort zone.