This is the autobiography of Matt Atkinson. He made national news after he averted a columbine style attack at his WI high school. He details how his life has changed after the event and also how it was before the event occured.
Excerpt
The day is April third nineteen eighty-nine and the time is approximately six pm CST. A little baby boy is born to Rick and Nancy Atkinson. He was a nice sized healthy baby. The only complication was that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. That baby was me.
My parents went many days before finding the right name for their little boy. They finally settled on Matthew John Atkinson. My first name meant "Gift of God.” My middle name was after my grandfather on my mom's side. Oh if my parents only knew how true that name would become later in my life.
Life for me has never been a cake walk. My parents divorced after having been married just over a year. I was too young to ever know what was happening at the time. I myself was only a year old. My mother was always there for me. She would get up every day and walk me to my daycare, then take the bus to work and then walk me back home when she got done. She got me started in a program called Head Start which was preschool. My dad was against it. Personally I think it helped me turn out the way I did. Mom and I were far from living on the high horse. We were dirt poor. We lived in an apartment that had cheap rent at the time and we still had to have help from the government to pay for it. We were also on government help to get food. And to top it all off we had no air conditioning.
This book is a collection of short stories that depict events in Author's life while she lived in Romania, then in Greece, and last in America. It's a beautiful and very sincere account of a young woman's life and comming to age.
