One Friday afternoon I was sitting in the crowded lobby of my doctor’s office, waiting to be Sneezes, coughs, and children’s conversations could be heard throughout theoffice. The young girl sitting next to me, who I assumed was about 15 years old, was veryimpatient as to waiting to be called in by a nurse. She kindly asked me what time it was and that’swhen our conversation sparked. I learned that her name was Ashley and that she was 17 yearsold. When Ashley was only 4 years old her father walked out of her and her mother’s life. Eversince then things have been unstable in her life. Later when she was 10 years old her motherre-married the man who is now her “mean” step father. She claims that most of the problemsarose when her step father’s job required the family to relocate from Sacramento, California to theRio Grande Valley. She was required to move schools and make new friends. Unfortunately these new friends were not at all the best influence on her and peer pressurepressed forward. In Junior High she and her friends were known as the trouble makers, the groupof boys and girls who just went to school to make fun of the other students. She claims that thesethree years were the hardest for her. Her younger half-brother was always sick and required a lotof attention from her mother therefore her mother wasn’t always available to her when she neededadvice. At the age of 13 began to be involved in drugs, she said that her first incident withcocaine nearly sent her to the grave. Ashley didn’t learn by that incident, she kept on using drugsand over time built up to the stronger ones. It wasn’t long after the cocaine incident that shebecame involved with boys. It wasn’t until the last time she was hospitalized for drug abuse thatshe realized she should stop. Ashley said that without the help of positive television and goodfriends she wouldn’t have ...
