Hey, thanks for hanging in here .. /agh/ (my universal frustration sound). This story took a lot of prep work, and still I’ve shot it out here without smooth transitions, clear subtitles, or equalization. I had Ja’Quante in the rocket launcher for a week trying to figure out how to present it. Since I don’t have a computer, every bit of it was done on my iPhone mini.
Okay. Story of the story of Ja’Quante.
First draft, 2014, I think. I had done homebound education with two kids, a sixteen-year-old new mom and a middle school boy. Homebound is named for teaching kids at home who cannot, or may not, go to school. Reasons for removal are controlled by the federal government, are documented, but are typically medical, criminal, or mental health.
We who don’t live on the streets don’t know streets, like dumpster diving for food, or moving stolen goods to try to pay rent.
Oddly, while media in 2016 found my deactivated Google blog in the so-called “way-back-machine,” and threw it up online, they missed this one. Only about forty out of five hundred posts related to school life. Usually, Black Lives Matter and its white lady writers pointed to one about fighting in school. Ja’Quante might have body-slammed my career in one post, instead of my three-month walk of shame in St. Paul that stretched into three years across five Minnesota school districts up to the Canada border.
Not sure what’s next for Ja’Quante. Either sludge pile, or further development.
Thanks again for watching. I appreciate you so much.
Hotspvrre
33. Ja’Quante