A Wasted Life

Simon was like any other youngster in the district.  He played all the sports from football to tennis, went to school everyday, even worked well at school but refused to heed the advice of his parents and teachers.  Such advice was ‘Stay away from drugs’.  Ignoring this advice led him to a lifetime in prison.

Like most boys who went wrong, Simon got into bad company.  His ‘so called’ friends enticed him to smoke a ‘spliff’.  The high he received was nothing like he had experienced before.  True, he had coughed and spluttered the first time, but he soon got the knack of it.  From that first time he was hooked. He moved from marijuana to coke and then to crack. His aim always was to get a ‘high’ like the first time but it never came.

Soon he started staying away from school.  His marks at school went to the lowest ever.  He stole money from his parents or sold items that were not his.  He stayed out late at nights.  He cursed, he lied and he got into all kinds of mischief.  He began to look like an old man at age seventeen.  He was going down the road of most drug abusers.

One day, in the little district where he lived, the headlines of the newspaper read ‘Youth Takes Friend’s Life In A Quarrel’.  In a drug related dispute, Simon stabbed his friend.  His punishment was life in prison.  Simon’s was a promising life but marijuana and cocaine saw to it that the promise was not realized.

Stewart Russell © 1998