When I was training the Guatemalan national Olympic mathematics team, there was a kid whose mother woke up every Saturday morning at 2am so she and her son could ride a bus (departing from their little village in the middle of nowhere at 3am, and arriving in the capital city at 6am) and attend the training sessions. Sometimes they wouldn't bring anything for lunch except fruit. (The kid was very good at mathematics, though, of course, he hadn't had the opportunities for nurturing his talent that other kids in the group had had.) Years after leaving the country, I don't know exactly what became of him—I'm sure he isn't a mathematician (I have a way to know) and that the poverty that struck his family is still a staggering problem in his community. I also know that there are many other kids like him. It certainly isn't hard to imagine circumstances that might have caused his life to go downhill—a minor blow, and a kid whose mother makes enormous sacrifices to get him ahead can see his fate radically change direction. This is why the presumption that the homeless are necessarily mentally ill or else slackers offends me. It betrays an embarrassing lack of intellectual rigor, true, but it also betrays kids.
Pedro.
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