A kid walks into foster care …

Apropos to absolutely nothing, I was reminded today during a conversation with one of the social workers on my staff of a 14 y/o boy I worked with several years ago. This kid – who I’ll call Jerry in part to protect his identity, but more because I honestly don’t have any recollection of his real name – was living in a group home in a little town up the Thruway after having been removed from his mother. I would say “the care of his mother,” since that’s the usual verbiage. Except in this case it was more like his mother, and his younger sister, were removed from his care. Because he had, in fact, been the organizing authority in his home for at least the last 18 months as his mother sunk deeper and deeper into a schizophrenic abyss.

Some months before his removal from the home, the money ran out, and the electricity and gas were turned off. Jerry somehow shepherded the family through the upstate New York winter. He had a camp stove in the house, prepared food, managed to get himself and his sister clean enough and to school – all while making pretty good grades. I don’t know the details of how the family survived, but I do know the CPS caseworkers and the group home staff were in awe of this kid’s obvious genius level IQ.

As was I. During the intake, the first time I met him, I spent a little over an hour with him, and his responses to me, the questions he asked, the demands he confidently made, and his level of self-awareness were just astonishing. I was kind of ready for it because of my talks with the caseworkers. But once I started talking to him I kept having to remind myself to 1) remember that he was just 14 and not a peer, and 2) not let the sheer force of his intellect intiidate me, as it obviously intimidated the other workers. Very much like a young Good Will Hunting. Just amazing.

One anecdote that I related to my staff member today is illustrative of what he was like. He had started interrogating me about my work, and I told him that prior to accidently becoming a social worker I had done in-home interviews for about 18 months as a consultant for the Suny Research Foundation in NYC, I had tromped around through many of the various projects and other cheap housing, assessing their satisfaction with Medicaid home health services. He had a keen interest in how I got around, and I told him that I usually used the subway. I told him I was living in Rockaway Beach, in far south Queens, and the commute to upper Queens or far uptown Manhattan or the Bronx could be 90 minutes. Anyway, to make a long story short, he started telling ME what trains I must have taken – using the A train from Rockaway Beach, catching the 6 train to go to Pelham, or the 1 or 3 train to go to West Harlem, or the F or N trains to go to south Brooklyn, etc. It didn’t take long at all to figure out this kid had the entire damned NYC subway system memorized – but had never, not once, been to NYC. It’s just where he wanted to live, and he had learned the train system out of a book.

I only got to visit with him a few times before my boss took me off the case. I was so pissed at her for that, because I frankly thought I was one of the few workers who could help this kid. As it was, like the kid in Good Will Hunting, he had some significant hostility and aggression issues, and was moved from one group home to another, then finally got moved to Long Island somewhere due to some distant family connection of something. I have no idea what ever happened to him. But I think of him from time to time and hope he was able to in some way live up to his potential. Too damned bad he had such a high deck of cards stacked against him …