Don't Start Nothing, Don't Take Nothing

We were in the car, a place where Jessie often told me stories about her past, when she stated, "All women get treated that way". She was talking about seeing women in the bad part of town, hanging out with users and abusers, and selling the only thing they had left.

It became my mission. If she gained nothing else from living with me, I wanted her to see that terrible things do happen to good people but that SHE could do something to protect herself and change the odds of being "treated that way".

The tough little girl I met said things like, “don’t start nothing, don’t take nothing.” This meant that if someone was rude to you, you hit them. In the suburbs, violence is not the norm in the classroom. The teachers were in for quite a surprise with Jessie. But Jessie got lucky. Instead of judging her for her tough demeanor and bullying behaviors, the teachers fell in love.

When she came to us, she couldn't even read 3 letter words. She barely knew the alphabet. She was supposed to be in the 3rd grade. She sat on the kitchen floor with homemade flashcards while I cooked dinner each night. I tried to teach her how to read the spelling list of the week. I wasn’t worried about her passing the test. I wanted her to be able to answer the teacher without being the laughing stock of the classroom. Her teacher was frustrated because Jessie ALWAYS had her hand up with a question, wanting to learn. But, she was so far behind; the teacher thought it was impossible to meet her needs. It was a tough battle, but we were finally able to move her back to 2nd grade. Three years later, when she left us, she was reading at her grade level. She worked SO HARD to get caught up.

She was a natural athlete and loved to play little league softball and basketball. She found success easier on the field and the court. She fell in love with the Wichita Wranglers baseball team, who her foster dad took her to watch, frequently. The game when they asked her to be the honorary “bat boy”, I thought I could see her floating off the ground as she walked.

We still had our moments. In 3rd grade, she accepted a dare and ran across the playground with her shirt flung to the ground. She was in 4th grade when she finally gave up trying to work things out with a bully at latchkey. She pounced on him at the playground and pounded him a few times. The difference? This boy had been acting like a bully to all the kids and Jessie confessed to me that she had tried all the verbal options for weeks. The adults weren’t doing anything about it.

Jessie changed so much in 3 years with us that she had a difficult time adjusting socially when she went back to her old neighborhood and had to live and learn in a place where it’s understood, “you don’t start nothing, you don’t take nothing.”

It’s important to me to believe that I helped Jessie learn life lessons like: education is the key to changing your life, being the best you can be is more important than winning, a family isn’t always perfect but you keep trying, and remember that Kristy will always love you.

But, I have to be honest; I think I learned as much or more from Jessie. Her strength in tough times, her ability to get what she needed, and her love for simple things were great examples for others. But the thing that inspires me is her passion to become the best she could be.

Story ID:	1570
Written by:	Kristy Duggan (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Biography
Location:	Wichita KS United States
Year:	2002
Person:	my foster daughter, Jessie