The Other Wes Moore - Post Reading

“Early losses condition you to believe that short-term plans are always smarter.  Long-term plans don't see to matter.” If children see the people around them get into trouble or die, they begin to believe that something like this could happen at any time. They think that nothing is certain. This is true: you never know if you might die in a car accident or of a heart attack tomorrow. However, in “The Other Wes Moore”, most of the boys saw bad things happen to their friends and family. They believed that something would inevitably happen to them, as well. 
They made bad decisions, believing that it did not matter in the long term, because there might not be a long term. They began to do drugs. They thought, if their family did not care what happened to them, they why should they care? 
Society forgot them and closed them off in run-down places, so the children such as both of the Wes Moore’s grew up believing that society did not need them, and did not want them. One of the boys changed his way of thought by going to military school. Through his years there, he began to mature. The other Wes Moore had a period of time where his outlook improved, but that change was not allowed to grow enough to stay when he got back home.
Both of the boys grew up without their fathers. The narrator’s father died, while the other Wes Moore’s father left. This is why he was not a good father to his own four children; he did not know anything different. However, if his own father had been there when he grew up, it is likely that he would do the same for his children.

Both of the boys grew up selling drugs. All of the other boys where they were from did the same. The boys wanted to fit in, as most of us do. They knew that their families needed money. When they made mistakes and got caught, or saw the same things happening to their friends, they learned that they never knew what might happen in their lives. They began to live how they wanted, because they didn’t know when that freedom would be taken away.