Agent Thunder hangs his poetry and art on the walls of his small room at the Daybreak shelter. Photograph by Larry C. Price.
He will be known as “Agent Thunder.”
Why? Is it a street name?
Nah. This just seems like the perfect opportunity to use it.
Agent Thunder has been homeless since February 2008. He is 18 now, which means that he went out onto the street when he was 17 years old and still in high school. Which means that he didn’t finished high school.
To be specific, Agent Thunder was kicked out of his adoptive parents’ home. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. The whys don’t matter. He went back to live with his biological family. Social services took him away from them when he was 7 and now, belatedly, he realizes it was for good reason. He is tactful.
Their lifestyle, it was a problem.
Their lifestyle involved a lot of drinking and smoking pot and people who made Agent Thunder feel really, really uncomfortable. He left his mother and went to live with a brother, who is not really a brother, but seems like one. And then the brother got into trouble, a lot of trouble involving drugs and probation violations, and well, to make short work of a long story, Agent Thunder, found himself on the street, looking for a place to stay. He moved from friend to friend, couch to couch, each time wondering how long the welcome would last. It never lasted long.
He spent one night at a shelter for homeless adults. The place was creepy, full of drug addicts and people who didn’t have any problem walking around without their pants. The odor was atrocious and he had to lie on a mat on the floor less than two feet from people on either side of him.
I was afraid.
Afraid? Of being hurt?
No. Afraid of being like them. Of being in the same situation they were in.
That night at the shelter, lying awake, smelling the smells, listening to conversations that he wishes he didn’t hear, conversations that he will not repeat, Agent Thunder resolved to get his life together.
I really began to reflect and think about what I did to mess myself up. That night convinced me to find something better so I wouldn’t end up with something worse.
A woman told him about Daybreak, a nonprofit organization in Dayton that provides housing and social services for children and youths, and he went, reluctantly at first, to the bright, painted brick building on Patterson Boulevard. At Daybreak he has his own bedroom in the shelter, a clean if spartan space. He’s getting job training and doing some work at a senior citizens center. He likes art and can draw, really draw. He shyly shares a few works, a perfect sketch of people sitting on the day room couches, stylized figures with hearts and birds, a comic book hero with bulging muscles. It’s all done in ink, on lined paper, ripped from a spiral notebook, but it is good. The sort of good that deserves more attention.
He’s working toward his high school degree at the charter school that works with Daybreak residents. At times, it’s been one step forward, two steps back. Agent Thunder will be the first to admit he has a way to go.
I did some things not a lot of people would be proud of. I didn’t have a job. I wasn’t contributing to the household. I was clueless about being on my own. I still have pride issues. I don’t like asking for stuff and hearing no.
Five years down the road, he sees college or a really good job in fine arts or fashion or the culinary world. He talks about a future in which he hosts art shows in different countries around the world, art shows with paintings, drawings, lots of different pictures. It’s a big dream for a homeless street kid, but then, considering where Agent Thunder has been and where he is now, it doesn’t seem so far fetched.
You never know. You’ve got to believe anything’s possible.
– Debbie M. Price
